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With storm
clouds now gathering over Europe,
12 September 1938 - Hitler
makes his much anticipated closing address at Nuremburg
in which he vehemently attacks the Czech people and
President Benes. |
I Was Very Lucky by Professor Hans Popper.
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| In the late nineteenth century,
the word 'race' became politicized and confused with
the word 'nation'. The Jews, so blatantly a mixed community
of peoples, were and still are widely - whether naively,
or maliciously - called a 'race'. Before the plebiscite
confirming the unification of Germany and Austria in
1938, political slogans were painted on the pavements
of Vienna. |
| After Hitler's victory,
Nazis hauled Jews out of their flats to scrub the streets
clean. Photographs of groups of local people standing around
and having a good laugh were, of course, in the press.
As things 'normalized',
everybody 'non-Aryan' - i.e.
Jewish - could be hauled off the streets or taken from
their flats to be interrogated in a police station. Sometimes
they were let go again, more frequently put in prison or
in a concentration camp. |
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| Prison was usually followed by release. In concentration
camps, survival was a possibility, but it was rare. Also
seized were people known to have belonged to one of the
anti-Nazi parties (e.g. the Social Democrats), or anyone
else who might be anonymously denounced, usually by the
private entrepreneurs - or profiteers and gangsters - who
took advantage of confiscated property. If you owned a
shop or business, you were well advised to sell it and
get away if you could. Some buyers were simply profiteers,
but some actually helped their customers. |
Reisepass |
Acquiring passports and exit visas was not so hard, though
it was complicated enough, and was made as unpleasant as
possible. Getting entry visas was always the really difficult
part. Most if not all countries closed their frontiers
to Jewish refugees, only letting in a trickle of small
groups. One day it might be fifty to Finland, or twenty
somewhere else, for no apparent reason. |
| Special Kinder transports
were organized for children, and a few Jews managed to
get visas for Palestine (which was then under British
mandate). A small number - mostly
women - were accepted into domestic service in Britain.
Otherwise, you had to be invited by someone who could guarantee
for your upkeep. A few people crossed borders illegally,
and what happened to them would depend on the grace and
favor of the particular country. Why could so few people
get to safety? One reason one always hears is: "The
foreigners take our jobs away from us." Yet any economist
can tell you that the opposite is the case: immigrants'
ideas and initiatives create jobs and other opportunities.
The true reasons, in that time of depression and mass
unemployment, were stark fear and xenophobia: fear
of strangers. An animal smelling an animal |
Children go to Palestine |
| from a different herd is
put on the defensive. The notorious
story of the ship full of refugees sailing from country
to country, ending up with all aboard dead, is too well
known. |
| I was very lucky. My mother had English relatives - her
uncle had moved to London before the First World War. His
wife was the mother of Leslie Howard, the concert pianist,
and other artistic boys and girls. Leslie was a big earner,
but also a big spender, so they were reasonably comfortable,
but not really rich enough to look after us. Still, they
helped where they could, and Leslie Howard (a cousin, who
was an RAF officer in the First War) worked very hard,
even visiting us in Vienna, to help us get British visas.
He and a lawyer eventually succeeded in getting us out. |
| First we stayed in Prague - my father had family there - but
the Czechoslovak authorities would not consider extending
our transit visa; so on the 27th of September, I think
it was, we flew to London. Why did we fly? Because we had
to sign an undertaking never to set foot on German soil
again (and who could have wanted to?). |
| When we got out of the
plane in Croydon Airport, some official cross-examined
us, although everything he could have wanted to know was
clear from our passports and |
Croydon airport |
visa. How long this might
have gone on and what the outcome might have been I can't
imagine, but fortunately George Howard turned up, and after
a few minutes' conversation, we followed him to his car.
Settling in was a hazardous matter. Work permits were almost
impossible to get. We depended on chance amounts of money
turning up, often from the overworked refugee organization
in Woburn Square. |
| My parents had been asked
by the refugee committee to run a house for refugees,
and a local clergyman told us about Kingham Hill school.
Eventually I got a free place at this boarding school
in the Cotswold's set up by a philanthropic Victorian
millionaire Charles E. B. Young . |
| By now the war had started. Soon they were all interned.
I was under sixteen, too young to be taken. It was indiscriminate
mass internment, no rhyme or reason in it. Most internees
were released again after a few months, allegedly on medical
grounds. Young men like my older brother went into the
forces. Among others, there were a good many suicides .
. . |
| Hans Popper was
born in 1924 and grew up in Vienna. His family fled from
the Nazis in 1938 and came to Britain. Hans joined Kingham
Hill School and was in Norwich House. After army service,
and qualifying as a teacher, he took a PhD in medieval
German and went to work at Swansea University in 1961.
Though retired, he is still an active researcher, working
on medieval epics and on the philosophy and psychology
of emotions in European traditions. He is a volunteer for
the Samaritans and writes letters on behalf of Amnesty
International. It was in September of 2008 that he granted
our historian his permission to record his story and
publish his article I
was very Lucky on our website. |
| Bill "Willie" Strupp was
born in 1928 in Germany. Thanks to information passed
on to our historian by Bill's close friend, Geoff Ball,
we can record that Bill's two sisters came to the UK
from Saxony in 1938 by train to Hamburg and then by boat
to Harwich. They already had family members in the UK
to act as sponsors. That was a purely family arrangement
when their parents foresaw what was going to happen.
Bill came in 1939 by Junkers
52 from Munich to Croydon. That's the story Eva, his
sister, remembers. The family home was absorbed into
the Russian Zone after WW2, but still stands to this
day. Willie was in Bradford 1939 - 1944.
Geoff Ball recalls it was this Journey by Junkers 52
that inspired Bill to join the RAF. Sadly we have to
remind readers that he died at his home in Toronto on
May 13th 2008. You can read Bill's obituary here. |
| Kindertransport Part
of a Wikipedia
article "Refugee Children Movement or "RCM'" is
the name given to the rescue mission that took place
nine months prior to the outbreak of World
War II. The United
Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish
children from Nazi Germany ,
and the occupied territories of Austria , Czechoslovakia ,
Poland and
the Free
City of Danzig . The children were placed in British
foster homes, hostels, farms etc.. On 15
November 1938 ,
a few days after " Kristallnacht ",
a delegation of British Jewish leaders appealed in person
to the Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom , Neville
Chamberlain. Among other measures, they requested
that the British government permit the temporary admission
of Jewish children and teenagers who would later re-emigrate.
The Jewish community promised to pay guarantees for the
refugee children." |
Wien Westbahnhof (
Vienna West
Station, or Vienna Western Station)
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| Hans Leistina was at school 1939
to 1945. My memories of my journey, in
March 1939, are very vague. I remember saying Goodbye
to my parents and grandparents at the Vienna Westbahnhoff. I
was eight years old and the train was 100% children
more or less my own age. The only thing that I remember,
on the train, was an Official person coming into the
compartment and asking all the children, that if they
had any money, they were to surrender it. No one in
my compartment had any money.
I do not remember eating anything
and I do not remember any stops (I believe there were
none) and I have no recollection of going on a boat. Later, I wondered if they put
the train carriages on the boat. All the children
ended up in a large waiting hall. After a wait of two
or three hours, Miss Erna Beer came to pick me up. I
did not have any baggage - that all travelled separately.
Miss Beer was the Private Secretary of Sir Charles Seligman
- my Guardian. They were glad that they had found
Kingham Hill School to take me. Miss Beer took me to
Paddington Station and she handed me over to the Train
Conductor and requested that he make sure that I got
off at Kingham Station. I slept all the way from Paddington
to Kingham where I was met by the Warden - Rev. Douglas
Horsefield and his German Speaking sister - Miss Horsefield
who was also my Teacher in Class 2. Due to the fire of
Plymouth house in 1938 , on arrival I was accommodated
in Greenwich House. |
Hans also informed our historian of the WWII Jewish
boys who escaped to Kingham Hill he only had contact with
one - Hans Popper . There was never any attempt on the Hill
to introduce the Jewish boys to each other - I do not know
if that was intentional or an oversight. I no longer
remember how I got to meet Hans Popper but I know both he and
I came from Vienna, so I looked on him differently because
he came from the same City as I did.
In 1947 the UK Parliament passed a special
Naturalisation Act to grant UK Citizenship to any of those
Jewish Children who were still minors and who had lost both
their parents during the War. This was a very special and unique
way of being granted UK Citizenship and I was one of those
who benefited from it.
Hans Leistina is
a retired accountant who now lives in Seattle
in the USA. He proudly retains his British Citizenship.
Hans joined the KHA on leaving school
and has remained in touch ever since. He last visited the Hill
in 2003.
The Class of 1938 Refugee Boys!
| Rolf Breitenfeld |
Bradford |
Walter Kubelbak |
Clyde |
Hans Leistina |
Norwich |
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| Hans Popper |
Norwich |
Willie Strupp |
Bradford |
Ralf Weber |
Sheffield |
Also Mr
Birch, the adult who lived with The Warden and worked in
the Carpentry Shop. He eventually joined
the Pioneer Corps.
This rescue operation is, in general, considered a success
as most of the rescued children survived the war. A small percentage
were reunited with parents who had either spent the war in
hiding or survived the Nazi camps. The majority of children,
however, lost home and family forever. The end of the war brought
confirmation of the worst kind: their parents were dead. In
the years since the children had left the European mainland,
the Nazis and their collaborators had killed nearly six million
European Jews, including nearly 1.5 million children.
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| The memorial to
commemorate these events at Liverpool Street Station,
London. |
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Our historian was in contact with the KTA
organisation for information on one other of our class of 1938,
Rolf Breitenfeld, as these communications show:-
Let's hope for any news of Walter Kubelbak,
Ralf Weber or Mr Birch that this article might bring. I wish
to dedicate this article to The Kindertransport
Association for their assistance with my research for this
article.
John D. Timmins
November 2008
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