... And the Policeman Smiled (7 page)

New clothing caused much vexation for parents who often had eccentric images of the well-dressed English. Tweeds were much
in demand for boys who were togged up to look like young versions of Sherlock Holmes.

‘My mother bought me an outfit which marked me as a complete foreigner as soon as I arrived in England,' Richard Grunberger recalls. ‘I had a pleated jacket and tight-fitting trousers which I soon came to know as plus fours. But though I felt strange I didn't worry too much about it at the time. I was too concerned about the shop owner. He had a badge on his lapel which showed that he was a long serving Nazi. I was told that the shop had recently been Aryanised.'

The bolder parents set their imaginations to work on ways to get round the restrictions on taking out anything of value. A few boys carried new Leica cameras, which they hoped to sell in England, but others were more subtle. It was not entirely to support his musical talent that Leslie Brent's mother gave him a violin that had been bequeathed to her. Stringed instruments held their worth and could fetch good prices.

Yoash Kahn was nervous that someone would show an interest in the contents of his sponge bag:

I had been given a medallion – the sort you wear on a chain round your neck. It had my initials on one side and some Hebrew letters on the other. My parents were determined that I should take it with me, so one of them got a tin of Nivea cream, peeled off the silver paper covering very carefully, buried the medallion in the cream and then resealed the tin. Of course, I was scared out of my wits the whole journey. I'm the sort of person who never takes anything through customs illegally because I just know that my face will give me away. But somehow I managed to get away with this. I remember, I couldn't quite believe it, and for days after arriving in London I kept the medallion in the Nivea, checking every now and then that it was still there.

Most parents played by the rules. The consequences of being found out were too grim to contemplate. Told not to take any money, Henry Toch left with three Pfennigs in his pocket: ‘My first contact with the English was begging for a penny to send a card home.'

The constant admonition from parents was to be polite to the SS guards. Sometimes it paid off. When Felix Huttner was asked
by a tight-lipped guard: ‘Where are you going?' he replied, almost apologetically: ‘To England.' The frown turned to a smile. ‘Oh, you'll enjoy it there. I wish I was going.'

Other parents were all for braving it out. The parting words to Nina Liebermann were shouted by her mother across a crowded platform: ‘And if they ask for your gold earrings at the frontier, just take them off and throw them out of the window!'

As the time came for leaving, parents and children suffered conflicting emotions – sadness, excitement, fear, relief. Dorothy Sim practised her English:

All I succeeded in learning was ‘I want to go to the WC,' which my parents and I in our ignorance pronounced ‘VK' and ‘I have a handkerchief in my pocket.' Among my clothes they packed a box full of precious family photographs, my own set of cutlery and a toilet case with cloth and soap. My father had taken the toilet case with him when he fought in the First World War. He had won the Iron Cross.

I recall arriving at the railway station in Hamburg. There were two stone lions guarding the entrance. I was carrying my toy dog Droll and I had my leather shoulder bag on. I dropped Droll underneath the train and a man had to climb down and rescue him. I had a peach and a pear in my shoulder bag. We children boarded the train to get our places. Then I was sent off again to say farewell to my mother and father. I can see them to this day. They were standing in a corridor behind a barrier. I said my goodbyes and then walked back up the long corridor away from them and into the train.

Leslie Brent was seen off by his parents and his sister:

My mother was very tearful but my father put on a stiff upper lip. To me it all seemed very bewildering. It is hard to describe my feelings. I was low but not utterly desolate because I realised that all this was being done for my good. I was aware of the fact that some great act of kindness had been extended to me. Certainly I had no idea that I would not go back again or that my family would die. That is something I couldn't have foreseen and I don't think anyone did.

It was the same feeling of perplexity for Hans Groschler, now Herbert Gale. With his younger brother, he travelled from his home town in Friesland to Berlin.

Our father took us; Mother preferred not to come. I remember that I did not find it too distressing because I had been moving around the country for the past two or three years, from one Jewish school to another. Father dropped us off at the collecting point and he stayed in a hotel. The next morning when we went to the authorities to collect our papers, I was beginning to feel apprehensive and sad. On the second morning my father took us to the train. We said our goodbyes and promised to write often. I was very bewildered and I could not fully understand what was going on.

Celia Lee came from Hamburg to Britain. She was recovering from appendicitis when she was told she had been accepted for the first
Kindertransport
. Soon after the war, when she was still a teenager, she wrote about her experiences:

For my twelve years I was hearing and learning too much lately. The hospital was a Jewish one. Half the male doctors had been sent to the concentration camp. Earlier Mummy had whispered to me that Daddy was in hiding. It did not make sense. Dad was no criminal.

Nurse was helping me get dressed so that Daddy would not have to wait for me. When he came in I cried out and hugged him ever so tightly. Secretly I had been worried, but seeing him reassured me that things were not too bad. When I had finished telling him all the news I had been saving, he held me gently and said, ‘How would you like to go to Holland or England, chatterbox?' I stared at him. ‘Do you mean it? Is Max coming too? Why are we going? Are you and Mummy coming too?'

My father looked at me gravely. ‘You are old enough to understand. A lot has happened while you have been in hospital. Things aren't the same for Jewish people. It would be safer for you and Max to go to another country. Mummy and I will follow later, if we can.'

‘Let's go to England, then.' I had made up my mind, thinking of the two years English I had learned at school. And my brother Max would be coming; that meant a lot to me.

That was on the Sunday. On Thursday we left for England. The days between flowed by. There was shopping to be done and papers to be put in order. A big red ‘J' was stamped on the front of my
passport. I was so excited, I did not notice the tired and strained expressions on my parents' faces.

When we said goodbye, I did not burst into tears. I was just so sure in my own mind that we would see one another again soon. Mummy gave me a golden necklace and Daddy gave me a lucky money piece to hang on the necklace. For the first time that week I came out of the haze I had been living in. I had a premonition that things were more serious than I had taken them to be.

The Berlin-Hamburg
Kindertransport
of 1 December was a masterstroke of improvisation. The entire exercise had been mounted in little more than a week and, though there were a huge number of disappointed families who failed to get places, there was the promise of more
Kindertransporte
to come.

The news from Vienna was less encouraging. Unlike in Berlin, the Jewish community was in total disarray. The German takeover of the country had brought the decimation of the
Kultusgemeinde
, with leading officials arrested, files impounded and buildings occupied. The Society of Friends had held on to its base, so too had
Youth Aliyah
, but no one working on behalf of refugees had direct contact with the senior members of the Nazi administration.

On 28 November 1938, Josef Loewenberg, leader of the Jewish community in Vienna, sent an urgent appeal to London. He reckoned there were some 35,000 young people who qualified for the British immigration scheme. Whether the Nazi authorities would cooperate was another matter. He asked for a representative to be sent to Vienna, ‘to be of assistance to us in carrying through our plans'. This could be no ordinary ambassador. Whoever went had to have the strength of purpose to get through to Adolf Eichmann, not the easiest bureaucrat to pin down, particularly for a Jew.

Back in Amsterdam for more talks, Norman Bentwich met the ideal candidate. Gertrude Wijsmüller-Meijer was the wife of a banker, a determined and energetic lady who devoted all her formidable organising skills to the refugee movement. She was non-Jewish and spoke good German, but she knew little of Vienna and had no contacts who could help her scale the hierarchy of the
Austrian administration. Undeterred, she took an evening flight to Berlin on 2 December and flew on to Vienna the following day.

What happened next, she described in a testimony for the Eichmann trial in August i960.

I arrived in Vienna Saturday midday. I had a hotel reservation at the Ring, in the Hotel Bristol. I immediately made my way to the Jewish quarter to seek the
Kultusgemeinde
. This quarter was enclosed by ropes as the Jews were not allowed outside, not even to cross the street.

On my way to the Palestine office, I was stopped and taken to a police station immediately next to the
Kultusgemeinde
, on the assumption that I was Jewish. I knocked on my cell door to explain that I was not Jewish. Eventually, when my cell door was opened, I declared that after my release I would inform all the newspapers in the world how Aryans were treated in Vienna. The mistake was greatly regretted and I was asked what could be done for me. I asked for an appointment with Eichmann. I was released with the assurance that I would receive notification as soon as arrangements had been made.

Mrs Wijsmüller saw Eichmann at his headquarters at 9.30 on 5 December.

I was conducted into a huge room; there was a platform at the end of the room. Eichmann sat there. Next to him, a very bright lamp. I approached him with my hand outstretched. ‘Doctor, I am Mrs Wijsmüller and I would like to speak to you.'

Whereupon he yelled at me, ‘We are not accustomed to speaking with women.'

‘What a shame. As you know, I am married and my husband works, so you'll have to put up with me. May I sit down?'

Eichmann was so astonished that I did not tremble before him, as he expected, that he allowed me to sit down. I then explained to him that the English government in London had given permission for 10,000 children to come to England. I had been requested to discuss with him how this could be arranged.

‘Have you got a letter from the English government?'

‘No.'

‘I would like to see your hands. Now go a little further. Remove your shoes. Lift your skirt a bit higher.' Then he said: ‘So purely Aryan and so mad.'

I was permitted to sit down again. Then he rang the bell to bring
in the Jew Friedmann. He asked Mr Friedmann: ‘Do you know Mrs Wijsmüller?'

‘No.'

‘Do you know Mr Friedmann?'

‘No.'

Then Eichmann turned again to Mr Friedmann. ‘Now we'll make the joke of a lifetime. This woman does not have a letter from the English government which confirms her claim that she is permitted to bring children into the country. We will put together a transport of 600 children and they must cross the frontier on Saturday (Shabbat!) midday, then Mrs Wijsmüller can show how she will bring the children into the country.'

I thanked him and told him I hoped I would see him again. Should he visit Amsterdam he should come to visit me as I would try and visit him, if I returned to Vienna.

Her next move was to telephone London, where the news that within the week 600 children would be on their way was received with some consternation. It was agreed that 100 of them would stay in Holland, the rest would be brought over in parties of 100–150.

In Vienna, the message quickly went out. One of those who picked up the signal was Fred Dunston, then Fritz Deutsch, a twenty-one-year-old former scout leader working with the
Youth Aliyah
organisation in Vienna:

At the beginning of December 1939 the
Palestina Amt
in Vienna received an official message from the
Kultusgemeinde
, who had received Eichmann's authority and permission to organise the children's transports. We were asked to nominate 100 children, who were eligible and able to travel on the first transport to England, which was to leave within a few days. Together with the names we were to supply within 24 hours a lengthy questionnaire, filled in and signed by a parent, a valid passport, 2 photos, and a medical certificate. If we could not manage this, the
Kultusgemeinde
would fill the places reserved for us from their own lists. What was to be done? At this moment my scouting experience proved invaluable and I set our well tried ‘alarm system' into motion. I contacted two of my former Patrol leaders, who in turn got eight more of their former scouts and turned up with them and their bicycles very quickly. The office had in the meantime prepared lists of names and addresses sorted out by districts and the boys went on their way to
contact the people concerned. Within an hour there was a long queue of children with their parents waiting to be interviewed. By working all through the night we managed to get everything ready and our allocation was fully taken up. It was a thrilling and exhilarating experience.