50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany (19 page)

There was still the matter of Eleanor’s affidavits. Geist introduced Gil and Eleanor to Cyrus Follmer, an embassy official who often reviewed affidavits prepared on behalf of Jewish refugees seeking to immigrate to the United States. While Gil met separately with other embassy aides about the logistics for traveling with the children from Vienna to Berlin, Eleanor took a seat at Follmer’s desk and showed him several of her affidavits. He studied them for a few minutes and then looked back up at Eleanor. “These are terrific in every possible way,” he said. “They are as complete as can be.”

A huge smile broke out across Eleanor’s face, and she let out a sigh of relief. Follmer produced a large rubber stamp from inside his desk and, with a declarative
thwack
, stamped his approval on every one of the documents.

By this time Gil had completed the arrangements for the children’s travel. Each child would have to be examined at the Berlin embassy by a doctor on Monday, May 22. This meant that Gil, Eleanor, and Bob would have to leave Vienna with the children on an overnight train the previous evening. “We left the embassy in a state of happy excitement,” wrote Eleanor. Of course, there was still the uncertainty about the visas themselves. But Gil was optimistic.

Eleanor returned to their hotel while Gil took a taxi to the Hilfsverein, the Jewish center he and Bob had visited before heading to Vienna. Berlin’s Jewish leaders, like their counterparts in Vienna, were now solely concerned with helping Jews exit Nazi Germany as quickly as possible. Six years earlier, Berlin’s Jewish population stood at 160,000, accounting for nearly a third of all German Jews. About 50,000 Jews in Berlin left within weeks of Hitler becoming chancellor in early 1933, though at least some of them returned within a year or so, unconvinced that Hitler was serious about his policy of
Judenrein
. Still, by the time of Gil and Eleanor’s visit in May 1939, Berlin’s Jewish population was only half of what it had been. The
JUDEN VERBOTEN
signs that appeared everywhere in Vienna were also a familiar sight in Berlin. The signs had temporarily disappeared during the 1936 Olympic Games, part of the Nazis’ propaganda deception. But the signs—along with more repressive restrictions on Berlin’s Jews—returned with a vengeance once the Games concluded and the world’s athletes and other visitors returned to their homelands.

The once-thriving Jewish life of Berlin, with its lively cafés, cultural societies, and vibrant intellectual life had disappeared by the time of Gil and Eleanor’s visit. Almost all of Berlin’s synagogues had been destroyed during Kristallnacht. More than a thousand Jewish businesses had been turned over to Aryan owners, while ten thousand Jews had been arrested and imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp twenty miles north of the city. Only one Jewish newspaper,
Das Jüdische Narchrichtenblatt
, was allowed to publish, and it existed chiefly to transmit the Gestapo’s orders to the city’s dwindling number of Jewish residents.

Three months before Gil and Eleanor came to Berlin, the Gestapo had set up the Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung—the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration—which mirrored the assembly-line operation that Adolf Eichmann had earlier set up in Vienna. At the Hilfsverein, Gil met once again with Julius Seligsohn, one of the city’s remaining Jewish leaders. Seligsohn told Gil that arrangements would be made to house and feed the children during their short stay in Berlin.

Gil had two more stops to make before he and Eleanor would catch their train back to Vienna. He walked into the booking office for the United States Lines and reserved fifty-three passages on the SS
President Harding
ocean liner—fifty third-class tickets for the children and three first-class tickets for himself, his wife, and Bob Schless. The
Harding
was scheduled to sail from Hamburg on the night of May 23.

Finally, Gil walked into a telegraph office and sent a cable to Louis Levine in New York. The cable assured Levine that the rescue project was moving ahead. Early that evening Gil and Eleanor checked out of their hotel and took a taxi back to the Anhalter Bahnhof, arriving in plenty of time for their overnight train to Vienna.

CHAPTER 15

To take a child from its mother seemed to be the lowest thing a human being could do. Yet it was as if we had drawn up in a lifeboat in a most turbulent sea
.

—E
LEANOR
K
RAUS

V
IENNA

M
AY
9–12, 1939

O
n the day that Gil and Eleanor returned to Vienna, Hedy Neufeld sat in her little office at the Kultusgemeinde and typed out a one-page letter, written in German and with a space at the bottom for Gil’s signature. After weeks of interviewing hundreds of families, the visiting Americans had completed the difficult task of choosing the children who would return with them to the United States. Certainly every child they met deserved to escape from their grim surroundings. But they could only take fifty. Hedy arranged for Gil’s letter to be delivered to the parents of the children who had been chosen for the rescue project. “I am genuinely delighted to be able to inform you that your child will be taken to the United States of America as part of our mission,” it began. The parents and their children were to gather the next morning at the Kultusgemeinde and bring several documents with them, including the children’s birth certificates, proof of residence, and various other papers that would confirm the identity of each child and his parents. Gil knew he would have no margin for error when it came to dealing with either the Nazi authorities or the American officials. He made sure that his letter underscored the importance of these documents and everyone’s attendance at the meeting: “I expect your prompt appearance tomorrow; otherwise the enrollment of your child will be questioned.”

The meeting was set for 9:00
A.M.
on the morning of Wednesday, May 10. Gil, Eleanor, and Bob were at the Kultusgemeinde an hour early, intent on being there to welcome the families as they arrived. But all of the parents and children were already there, standing patiently in a line that had begun to form shortly after dawn. “We passed them in the hall as we entered the offices,” wrote Eleanor. “There was no hysteria, no disorder, no noise. The children were washed and dressed in their best. Their behavior was perfect.” Gil and Hedy took their seats at one of the desks, as they had done during their earlier interviews. Eleanor and Bob sat next to each other at the other desk.

One at a time, each family was brought into the small office. “We all shook hands. Gil told them that their child had been selected to go to America,” said Eleanor. “Each parent received this news with great delight.” Gil then turned to each child who appeared before him. “Do you want to go to America with me?” he asked. Bob, speaking in German, then added, “Will you be a good, brave child and not be homesick if we take you there?” Next it was Eleanor’s turn. “We will be very good to you,” she told each child, with a reassuring smile on her face as she spoke in English and waited for Hedy to translate her soothing words into German. “You will wait in America for your parents to come.” Before the children left the office, Hedy pointed to Gil and said to each of them, “You will call him Uncle Gil now.” Turning toward Eleanor, she added, “And this is
Tante
Ellen.”

The meetings lasted all morning. Before each one ended, Hedy asked the parents to sign a document that formally transferred temporary custody of their children over to Gil “and those persons who have joined together for this undertaking.” The document also stated that Gil agreed to serve as a trustee for each child “until that child could be returned to one or both of his or her parents.” No one dared to mention that neither Gil nor any of the parents knew when—
or if
—they might be reunited with their children. The document asserted that each child would be returned as soon as one or both parents have “legally and permanently immigrated to the United States of America and can convincingly prove that I/we are able to assume full custody of my/our child.”

Eleanor found it difficult to keep her composure as she sat at her desk that morning, watching the heartbreaking parade of parents who did not hesitate to formally turn their children over to a group of strangers from another world. She saw in their faces a mixture of relief, sadness, hope, and fear. But Eleanor also noticed a difference between the demeanor of the men and that of their wives. These were men from all walks of life—doctors, lawyers, salesmen, merchants, and shop workers. Regardless of their stations in life—or rather, the positions they had occupied before they were stripped of their livelihoods—they now appeared utterly defeated as fathers, as husbands, as human beings. “They looked so lifeless, so hopeless, so forlorn,” she wrote. “Only one thing seemed to be left to these men, and that was pride in their children.” Many of the mothers, on the other hand, seemed so animated. “They smiled and chattered. Their cheeks were flushed and their eyes were dancing. They were still useful human beings. They were protecting their children.”

It occurred to Eleanor that though she had arrived in Vienna only two weeks earlier, it felt as if she had been in the city for months. Over the course of those two weeks, she had come to share the crushing sorrow of the mothers and fathers who were forced to give away their children without knowing if they would ever see them again. “Every bit of me was sick at this terrible piece of man’s inhumanity to man,” she wrote. Eleanor was painfully conscious of her role in the tragic circumstances that led parents to willingly offer up their children. “To take a child from its mother seemed to be the lowest thing a human being could do. Yet it was as if we had drawn up in a lifeboat in a most turbulent sea,” she wrote. “Each parent seemed to say, ‘Here, yes, freely, gladly, take my child to a safer shore.’ Fifty times this question was asked, ‘Will you leave your mama and papa and come to America with us?’ And each time the question was asked, I died a little more.”

Later that afternoon, the children and parents gathered inside the desecrated sanctuary of the Stadttempel synagogue, which adjoined the offices of the Kultusgemeinde. This was Eleanor’s first visit to the synagogue, which had been ransacked during Kristallnacht. “The altar had been broken, and shameful words were written on the walls,” she wrote. “The pews had been removed, and there were some hard wooden benches on the floors.” Several of the children sat on the benches while others either stood with their parents or sat on the floor of the vandalized synagogue. Six-year-old Friedrich Lifschutz and his parents, Morris and Bertha, arrived a few minutes late. Unable to find a seat on one of the benches where the other children were sitting, Friedrich climbed onto a chair in the front of the room, close to where Gil and some of the Kultusgemeinde officials were sitting. From that moment on, Gil would always jokingly refer to little Friedrich as “the president” of the group.

Gil carefully explained the plans for leaving Vienna, traveling to Berlin, and then boarding the ship in Hamburg. He described the home that Brith Sholom had built outside Philadelphia and assured the parents that it would provide a suitable temporary home for their children. Using the few words of German that he knew, Gil tried to reassure the parents that their children would be well cared for. As he spoke, Eleanor kept a steady gaze on the faces of the parents and the children. “The children were very quiet,” she said. The parents listened intently. No one said a word.

On Thursday, May 11, Gil sent another cable to Louis Levine, asking him to transfer $5,000 to the United States Lines, to cover third-class passage for the children. He also sent a cable to the Labor Department in Washington, confirming that he had assumed legal responsibility for the children and that their affidavits had been approved. Bob Schless spent the day at the American consulate, making sure that officials there had all of the children’s paperwork that would need to be forwarded to the embassy in Berlin before any visas could be issued.

On that same day, officials at the Kultusgemeinde dispatched a letter to Julius Seligsohn in Berlin, written in German and marked at the top with the words “
Kindertransport
from Vienna to USA.” The letter outlined the travel arrangements that Gil had already worked out with Seligsohn, including the precise time—9:20
P.M
.—when the train carrying the children would leave from Vienna, along with the time of its arrival—7:52
A.M
.—the following morning in Berlin. “Upon arrival, the children will travel via bus to the quarters you will provide where they will be served breakfast,” read the letter. “After a short stay, mainly for the purpose of getting cleaned up, the children will be brought to the American embassy to carry out the required formalities. How long the children will have to stay there isn’t possible to determine at this time.”