It began with a photo of the haggard, ragged novelist, taken at Les Mille. Somehow the picture made its way to the New York editorial offices of Viking Press, where Ben Huebsch, Feuchtwanger’s editor, knew precisely what to do. Working through intermediaries, Huebsch brought the picture to Eleanor Roosevelt’s attention.
The next problem was to find Feuchtwanger.
Marta solved that difficulty. Desperate for help, she headed directly from San Nicola to Marseille and the consulate, where she spoke to Harry Bingham’s colleague, Miles Standish, who had visited the Feuchtwangers in Sanary some months before.
Enlisting the aid of a Madame Lekisch, a regular visitor to the camp, where her husband, an Austrian physician, was interned, Standish arranged a rescue. Knowing Feuchtwanger’s routine, Madame Lekisch was able to direct Standish to a swimming hole where the author regularly bathed. There she handed him a note in Marta’s handwriting that said simply: “Ask nothing, say nothing, go with him.” In a waiting car, Standish had a woman’s overcoat and shawl and a pair of sunglasses, which Feuchtwanger put on. Disguised as an elderly woman, Feuchtwanger left the camp for the safety of Hiram Bingham’s attic, where he and Marta would wait to take a journey out of France.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Escape from Marseille
Waitstill explained in an August 27 “Dear Friends” letter to his parishioners that on September 1 he and Martha would attend a “final conference” in Carcassonne, about sixty miles southeast of Toulouse, where presumably the subject was relief schemes to assist the Czech soldiers still marooned in Agde. Also, he wrote, “Our Unitarian co-workers in Boston have been joined by Erika Mann (Mrs. W. H. Auden), the Belgian Minister and his wife, and by the former French Minister and his wife in asking us urgently to stay.... The inducement to stay and to have a hand in a movement of intellect as historic as that of 1848—this is very strong.” Evidently, the Belgian minister and former ambassador Amé-Leroy were in on a rescue mission, hinted at in the letter.
Waitstill signed the letter for both himself and Martha, with whom he was reunited in Toulouse on August 29—“unexpectedly,” as Martha put it in her datebook.
They had big news for each other. Waitstill told Martha about Erika Mann, the three Manns then hiding from the Nazis, and presumably something about the plans to rescue them, as well as the Werfels. At this point he was unaware of Lion Feuchtwanger. Martha for her part announced that her return to Wellesley Hills would have to be delayed because she had resolved to put together a transport of children at risk in Vichy France.
Waitstill did not try to dissuade her or question Martha’s decision. After spending another day in Toulouse, observing and participating in a local Quaker feeding program, Martha and Waitstill headed east along the Mediterranean coast for Marseille, stopping about halfway at Agde, where the Czech soldiers were billeted. The plan to get them out on the Yugoslav ship hadn’t yet been mooted by the abrupt change in Vichy regulations.
In Marseille, on September 2, Martha met Varian Fry for the first time. The ERC representative already was committed to a September 8–18 expedition to locate Kulturträgers on his list, so Waitstill agreed to stand in at Fry’s Marseille office, Secours Américain, in his absence.
As temporary head, Waitstill held interviews and tried to get necessary papers from local authorities, as well as from contacts overseas to whom he sent cables that he hoped would get through.1 Martha and Waitstill met with Fry on September 8, probably to finalize the plans for getting the Manns, Werfels, and Feuchtwangers out of the country. Since the Feuchtwangers, Manns, and Werfels were all wanted by the Gestapo, they had no chance of securing legal exit visas. This meant that an illegal clandestine operation would be necessary. The group agreed that the single most important figure in such a scheme would be Leon (known as Dick) Ball.
Ball was exactly the right choice for such operations. An American who owned a pig farm and a lard factory in the south of France, he had formerly driven for the American Ambulance Corps, a volunteer group that helped evacuate French casualties during the military disasters of May. He also had assisted any number of British pilots to escape by boat out of the Old Port of Marseille and escorted others over the Pyrenees and across the Spanish border. Ball was now working with Varian Fry.
Waitstill remembered walking out onto the terrace of their room at the Terminus “and looking out by night at the twinkling lights of this magnificent harbor and the shadow of the Cathedral of Notre Dame de la Victoire standing on a promontory across a reach of water. And after what I hoped at least in Unitarian terms was prayerful consideration, I went back in and said to myself, ‘Sharp, you can’t take any more risks here than you did in Prague.’” And with that he flushed all his notes down the toilet, just as he and Martha had destroyed every shred of evidence the year before at the Hotel Atlantic in Prague.
Fry and Waitstill decided to split the group. Fry and Ball would take the Manns and Werfels. Ball would then return to Marseille to help Waitstill, if necessary, with the Feuchtwangers and three other émigrés. One of the three was the Reverend Blahoslav Hruby, a Czech Protestant minister who had worked with the French underground. Another was a lawyer, and the third possibly was the lawyer’s wife.
Before Fry and Ball left with the first group, Waitstill had a run-in with the flamboyant Alma Werfel, whose legendary appeal was lost on him. He found her narcissistic, frivolous, and far too fond of alcohol. But it was the flowing outfit in which she had chosen to make her escape that crossed his line.
“Madame,” Waitstill fumed, “this is an extremely taxing climb. Wear low shoes. Throw away that summer reception hat; it makes you appear as if you’re heading for a Viennese garden party. And please come in some other dress than your all-white dress. And what is that white dog with the red leash?”
The lecture didn’t make much of an impact. “I think she’d had an extra nip of Benedictine,” he said, “which made her somewhat resistant to this life-saving counsel.”
Dick Ball explained to the émigrés that they likely would have to trek over smuggling trails and that the journey would be both arduous and risky. French border guards were apt to pop up anywhere and were trained to shoot at anything suspicious. The comparatively underpaid Spanish sentries usually were amenable to bribes, plus many of them detested the Germans. Nonetheless, this would be no garden party.
The first group of protégés, as Fry and Waitstill sometimes called them, made the train trip from Marseille to Cerbère with no problems. They arrived at 5 p.m., hoping that security would be lax enough for them to catch another train to Portbou in Spain. If all went well, they would be in Spain later that evening.
It was a vain hope. Police were everywhere. Without exit visas, the band of fugitives would not be allowed to travel farther.
Taking a chance that the officers on duty that night could be bribed or cajoled into waiving the regulations, Dick Ball took the passports to the police commissioner, who proved immovable. He said the group was welcome to spend the night in Cerbère, period.
Thus, lacking exit visas, the only way out was on foot over the mountains into Spain.
Ball led them in two groups, first the Werfels, then the Manns. Despite a heart condition, Franz Werfel made it. So did Alma, white dress billowing in the wind, visible for miles. The challenging climb was almost too much for portly Heinrich Mann, whom Ball, Golo, and even Nelly had to carry for most of the way.
Golo was traveling on an “affidavit in lieu of passport” that listed both his correct name and his ultimate destination, his father’s house in Santa Monica. A curious Spanish guard looked over the document, then addressed him.
“So you are the son of Thomas Mann?” he asked.
“Yes,” Golo replied, fearful that his personal journey to freedom was about to be aborted. “Does that displease you?”
“On the contrary,” the Spaniard answered. “I am honored to make the acquaintance of the son of so great a man.”2
Back in Marseil
le, Waitstill, with Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger and the three others, prepared for the journey. Frau Feuchtwanger later recalled that the first obstacle to boarding the train at the Gare St. Charles was the military guards who carefully scrutinized everyone’s identification. Since neither she nor Lion carried the required travel permits or exit visas, Martha and Waitstill needed a plan to sneak them aboard.
The answer lay in a highly convenient architectural feature of the Terminus Hotel. The Sharps discovered that hotel guests could avoid a long trek with their luggage to the appointed track by the simple expedient of a small tunnel that led directly from the hotel to the trains.
Since Waitstill and Martha already were staying at the Terminus, they brought the Feuchtwangers to their room. At the appointed early-morning hour on September 18, 1940, they escorted them through the tunnel to board the 5:05 train to Cerbère without incident. The soldiers posted at the terminal gates never saw them. Marta remembered that her fashion-conscious friend Martha had convincingly disguised herself as a fisherwoman for the occasion.
Martha and Waitstill and Lion looked on as Marta boarded the train alone and took a seat at one end of the second-class car. Then Waitstill and Lion sat down together at the other end and enjoyed the lovely Mediterranean scenery as the train chugged southwest toward the Spanish border.
They were well on their way to Narbonne when a stranger approached Waitstill with the warning that just ahead government agents were waiting to search every passenger to see if they were en regle—literally, in order. Waitstill faced a serious dilemma. Was this man a friend or foe? Could it be a trap?
He decided to take the stranger at his word. Quietly, Waitstill moved through the train, speaking briefly to each of his five charges. “We have been reliably informed that this train is going to be stopped and searched at the next station south of Narbonne,” he told them. “We must get off.”
The émigrés responded brilliantly, casually disembarking and then moving in random order to a small monastery garden, planted with espalier trees and vines, where they patiently waited for the next Cerbère-bound train. Once in Cerbère, they checked into a hotel to rest overnight for the next day’s climb.
In the meantime, Waitstill went on a six-mile excursion to Banyuls-sur-Mer, historically a major smuggling center, perched on the border between France and Spain. He had an appointment in the seaside town with Dr. Otto Meyerhof and his wife, Hedwig.
In 1922, Otto Meyerhof had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in muscle physiology and metabolism. With the help of the president of the Marseille Academy of Sciences, Meyerhof secured a position at a biology laboratory in Banyuls, hoping to position himself and Hedwig for an escape over the border into Spain. He then sought out Varian Fry. Although the Meyerhofs were not on the original ERC list, Fry was pleased to accommodate them.
Waitstill went over the details of the flight over the Pyrenees that the Meyerhofs would be taking with Dick Ball. Waitstill also took a collection of Meyerhof’s papers which he successfully transported to a Professor Malinsky in London. The couple left Banyuls on October 4 with Ball and were soon on their way to Philadelphia where a professorship awaited the Nobel laureate at the University of Pennsylvania.
From Cerbère the next day, Lion and Marta started out on foot, passing through the village and past vineyards into the high country along the border. Waitstill went by train with their belongings to wait for them in Portbou.
“It was very hot,” Marta remembered of the climb up and over into Spain. “But we both were used to mountain climbing, and it was no difficulty. The only thing we knew which was absolutely necessary was to find the customhouse. If you didn’t and one of the border guards saw you, he would immediately shoot without asking.”
The Feuchtwangers successfully crested the high hill—along the path Lion came across his picture on a wanted poster, which offered a hefty reward for his capture—and spotted the Spanish customhouse about fifty yards below. Since he had the superior identification, a US visa—Marta had only an old identification card—they decided that Lion should go first.
Marta couldn’t see him actually enter the structure, but she did see her husband walking away “with a good pace.”
She exhaled. He’d made it!
Harry Bingham had insisted that Marta bring a big supply of Camel cigarettes, and she soon had reason to thank him for his foresight. As she later recalled,
I came into the customhouse and said, “I wanted to take these cigarettes with me to America, but I heard the customs are so high that it’s not worthwhile. So I’d rather leave them here.”
I threw all those packages on the table, and they jumped on the cigarettes and didn’t even look at me. They just gave me a stamp on my paper, which said Feuchtwanger, and just let me go. They didn’t even open the door. I opened it myself. You know, I had never run down a mountain so fast!
Their ordeal wasn’t over. Lion Feuchtwanger also was wanted in Spain. From Portbou, the three of them rode to Barcelona, where they arrived on a Sunday. Short of cash with which to book the next leg of the trip, to the Portuguese border, Waitstill found the US consul at home that day and secured sufficient funds for them to keep going.
He installed Lion in first class, where train guards were less likely to check identities, and also gave him his briefcase with a bold Red Cross symbol painted on it. “You are to go nowhere without this briefcase,” Waitstill ordered.
He booked Marta in third class, where a polite Swiss gentleman noticed her frailness and secured for her an empty compartment. The Spanish railroad police showed up moments later, announced the compartment was reserved for them, and ordered Marta out. Suddenly her Swiss benefactor began shouting at the guards in German. “He did absolutely sound like Hitler,” Marta recalled. “They were so afraid of the German sounds, the German bellowing, that they ran away and let us alone. I could at least sit down and rest a little bit.”
Up front in first class, Lion had a close call of his own. “My husband went into the bathroom,” Marta explained, “and from the other side somebody opened the door and came into the bathroom. This was a German official. He said to my husband, in English, ‘Ah, you are from the Red Cross.’ He spoke with a Prussian accent. And my husband, in his Bavarian English, said, ‘Yes, I’m from the Red Cross.’ So they exchanged some polite words and left. It was dangerous and comical at the same time.”
Their last brush with discovery came at the Portuguese frontier. As they waited for a new train to take them to Lisbon, an American reporter approached Marta. “Is it true that Lion Feuchtwanger is on this train?” she asked in a loud voice.
“Who is that?” Marta replied
Waitstill walked up.
“What do you want from her?” he asked.
“I’m from the newspaper and I want a scoop!” the reporter answered, almost shouting. “I heard that Feuchtwanger was on the train. I want to send a telegram to my newspaper.”
“Be quiet!” Waitstill snarled. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous, something like that? You should know as a reporter.”
She apologized and said nothing more.3
Waitstill and the Feuchtwangers at last arrived safely in Lisbon, where Waitstill then had to do battle on Lion’s behalf with the local US vice consul. Relations were not nearly so cordial as they were with Harry Bingham. Not even a slow recitation of Feuchtwanger’s many published titles could convince the vice consul that here was a major Kulturträger, worthy of every consideration. Exasperated, Waitstill finally pulled out a document provided him in Marseille by Bingham. Under the US secretary of state’s letterhead, it read: “American Consular Foreign Service officials are directed to extend every aid for the emigration to the United States of the German writer Lion Feuchwanger. Signed Cordell Hull.”
The letter, Waitstill remembered, “had its effect, and his papers were put in order and secreted by me.”
Waitstill and Feuchtwanger, who would use Martha’s ticket, were scheduled to depart t
hree days later aboard the SS Excalibur. In the interim, Madame Amé-Leroy summoned Waitstill to the embassy, where she introduced him, as he recalled, to “a somewhat emaciated couple, pale and worried and apparently underfed.... I took pity on them before Madame l’Ambassadrice said a word.”
They were the Doctors Anet, a French husband-and-wife team of physicians; he a general surgeon, she a pediatrician and also a surgeon. They were bound for some remote corner of Africa on a church-sponsored mission to minister medically to the locals. However, a short time prior to this, while working together in a French field hospital, a German bomb had hit their operating theater. Luckily, the Anets had not been hurt, but all their surgical instruments were destroyed. Now, in Lisbon, their steamer about to leave port, the Anets needed to replace their implements for use in Africa. They told Waitstill that they’d gone to the Rockefeller Foundation to apply for help but been told that they did not qualify for financial assistance under foundation rules. Could Monsieur, in his capacity with the Unitarians, perhaps help? They produced a complete list of their needs. Waitstill was deeply moved. “I will do my best,” he told them.
Waitstill controlled AUA’s funds in what he called the Bank of the Holy Spirit. He checked the balance, considered what his successor, Reverend Charles Joy, would require to continue the AUA’s work, and “took the decision that they would have the maximum of what they wanted in surgical equipment.” Then he consulted the Rockefeller Foundation’s local office for recommendations where to buy the instruments and proceeded accordingly with the Anets’ shopping list.
When he’d fully assembled their equipment, he called the doctors to his hotel room.
“One of the great rewards of my life was the look on the faces of each of these two doctors,” he said, “and the large, slow tears that ran down their faces. We exchanged grand abrazos and kisses on both cheeks and they walked out like new people.”
Defying the Nazis Page 17