50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany (15 page)

The morning after the phone call with Gil, Eleanor made a list of all the things that had to get done before she boarded the SS
Washington
three days later. She had to notify the State Department about her travel plans and obtain travel visas for the countries—England, France, and Germany—that would make up her itinerary. Before Gil had left, he had signed over a power of attorney that gave her responsibility for the couple’s financial matters. Eleanor now had to decide what to do, with both of them out of the country. It was not the sort of decision that she had ever been called on to make. She turned to her sister Esther, known in the family as Essie and with whom Eleanor was particularly close. Essie, conveniently enough, had been helping out recently in Gil’s law office, which made it even easier for her to keep an eye on not only business but also personal matters while both Gil and Eleanor were away. As an added precaution, Eleanor, at her sister’s urging, signed a will before leaving the country.

Just as Gil had predicted, Eleanor had no problem booking passage aboard the SS
Washington
, which was part of the United States Lines’ fleet of trans-Atlantic vessels. She decided to indulge herself by reserving a stateroom with a private bath, “an extravagance which I had not considered until Louie Levine had told me to do so.” Next, Eleanor thought of all the things she needed to buy for the long journey ahead, which included “stockings, a new girdle and a pair of bedroom slippers.”

Finally there was the matter of looking after Steven and Ellen. Essie promised that she would come by the house every day to look in on the children. Gil and Eleanor had household help—a husband-and-wife couple who took care of the cooking and cleaning, and who drove the children to school, among other chores. But Eleanor now arranged for another couple to move into the house specifically to watch over the children. Mary Gavin had been a nursemaid for years and had helped to take care of the children when they were younger. She had since married and was living in West Philadelphia. She and her husband agreed to stay with the children on Cypress Street. “This was the first time both Gil and I would be away from the children at the same time,” wrote Eleanor. “I wasn’t the least bit happy about leaving them.”

On her last night at home, Eleanor stayed up with her sister, Sarah, until four in the morning, talking and making detailed notes about everything that needed looking after in her absence. After squeezing in a few hours of sleep, Eleanor faced the final task of packing for the trip. It suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea how long she would be gone. Six weeks? Two months? Perhaps even longer? “I began to arrange my clothes, gather suitcases and try to plan my wardrobe,” she wrote. “I telephoned my sister Fannie and asked if she would come and do the packing for me for time was running out.” There were plenty of last-minute errands to run—another pile of papers to sign at Gil’s office, checks to be written to cover household expenses and salaries. Eleanor made sure that everything was completed before Steven and Ellen came home from school later that afternoon “so I could have several quiet hours with them.”

After dinner at home with the children, Eleanor, accompanied by a couple of close friends, boarded an early evening train at Philadelphia’s Thirtieth Street Station. Everyone was quiet in the taxi that drove them from New York City’s Pennsylvania Station to the docks along Manhattan’s West Side, where the ship awaited its passengers for the late-night departure. Louis Levine, Sarah, and her nephew Richard, all of whom lived in New York, were waiting at the pier, and everyone boarded the ocean liner and squeezed into Eleanor’s compact stateroom for a bon voyage party. “We spent a very gay two hours, with my friends and relatives plying me with champagne and good wishes,” wrote Eleanor. “I needed all the bolstering I could get.”

It almost certainly escaped everyone’s attention that this same day, April 20, had been celebrated in every city, town, village, and hamlet throughout Nazi Germany. It was Adolf Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. “Never before had Chancellor Hitler been acclaimed with such demonstrations,” reported the
New York Times
, “as when he motored through the beflagged streets of downtown Berlin en route to the reviewing stand or when he took innumerable curtain calls from the balcony of the chancellery.” Some forty thousand storm troopers and SS guards lined up along the five-mile parade route, holding back the huge crowds, estimated at two million, hoping for a glimpse of Hitler as he passed by in his motorcade that proceeded up the broad Unter den Linden boulevard and past the soaring arches of the Brandenburg Gate. Earlier that morning, a steady stream of foreign diplomats had appeared at Hitler’s office to sign a birthday register in his honor. Among those who offered their obligatory birthday wishes was Raymond Geist, acting in his capacity as the American chargé d’affaires in Berlin.

Eleanor’s ocean crossing was not nearly as glamorous as the one that Gil had enjoyed aboard the
Queen Mary
two weeks earlier. The
Washington
was comfortable enough but fell far short of luxurious, which did not escape Eleanor’s attention. The ship’s main lounge inexplicably featured four enormous moose heads, straight out of a hunting lodge in the Adirondacks. “Nothing seemed sillier than crossing the Atlantic with these moose heads staring at you,” she wrote. She spent most of her time reading, either in her stateroom or on deck. Most of the passengers were English tourists or businessmen returning home, Eleanor noticed. “The trip on the whole was very dull, and I met no one of great interest,” she said. She managed to strike up a friendship with one English woman, “and there were two English gentlemen who took us to drinks and sat with us after dinner in the salon.” Eleanor’s friends and relatives back home, worried about her traveling into Germany, advised her not to tell anyone aboard the ship her final destination in Europe. “Whenever I was asked where I was going and why, I just said that I was going to Europe to meet my husband, who was there on business. We were going to have a holiday and return together.”

Eleanor had originally planned to remain aboard the
Washington
until it reached its final port destination in Hamburg. Gil would meet her there, and the couple would take a train to Vienna by way of Berlin. But midway across the Atlantic Ocean, rumors began making their way around the ship of dock strikes and other disruptions in Europe. Two days before Eleanor left New York, a French ocean liner, the SS
Paris
, mysteriously caught fire while docked at the French port of Le Havre. No one knew the exact cause of the blaze, which had resulted in two deaths and the complete destruction of the ship, which had been left smoldering in its berth. One of the stewards on the
Washington
repeatedly urged Eleanor to get off the ship before it reached Hamburg. Without providing any details, he hinted that the ship might be seriously delayed in arriving at the German port. The ship captain insisted to Eleanor that the
Washington
would arrive right on schedule in Hamburg. But Eleanor, who by now was in a state of heightened anxiety, arranged for a ship-to-shore cable to Gil that said she would leave the ship in Le Havre. From there, she would take a train to Paris, where she would meet him. Among other things, it meant they would be able to enjoy a brief romantic interlude in Paris before immersing themselves in their work in Vienna.

Eleanor’s stylish red hat was a big hit with her fellow passengers on the train that carried her from Le Havre to Paris. Several children were particularly fascinated by the decorative green bird. One young boy kept casting mischievous glances in the direction of the bird, shrieking “tweet, tweet!” as Eleanor passed by in the train’s narrow corridor.

She caught sight of Gil within moments of disembarking at Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare. “He looked most debonair, continental in fact,” she wrote. “In one hand he carried a cane, which was a new acquirement, and in the other hand was a beautiful bunch of violets for me. I threw myself into his arms.” Not knowing exactly when Eleanor was going to arrive, Gil had come to Paris a day early. From the train station, they took a taxi to Gil’s hotel, where Eleanor eagerly freshened up. Later they stopped at an outdoor café, lingering over lunch and basking in the warm sunshine of a beautiful spring day. Eleanor was dying to hear all about Gil’s time so far in Vienna. But Gil hesitated, telling his wife that such a serious conversation could easily wait until they were on the train that evening. “I don’t think we should spoil our one afternoon here by talking about Germany,” he told her. “Let’s just enjoy Paris.”

A few days before the couple’s rendezvous, a foreign correspondent for the
New York Times
had described the jittery atmosphere settling across Paris in what had already become known, somewhat jocularly, as “Hitler’s Spring.” Everyone in the French capital, the correspondent wrote, seemed to sense that war in Europe loomed. “France is not the only place where this uncertain ‘we don’t know what plans to make’ atmosphere is getting on everybody’s nerves in this Hitlerian spring of 1939,” the newspaper reported. But it was Paris, in particular, with its heightened appreciation for fashion, civility, and social customs, where the looming specter of war had created a palpable sense of anxiety. “Every Paris apartment house has been provided with sand to extinguish bomb fires. Everyone is supposed to have a gas mask,” said the
Times
. “It is not possible in such an atmosphere to make plans. It is not even possible to think clearly. It certainly is not possible to do business.”

For one sunny spring afternoon, however, Eleanor and Gil acted like two carefree Americans determined to enjoy every moment of a lovely, albeit brief, Parisian holiday. They strolled around the city. They window-shopped up and down the city’s fashionable boulevards. They had drinks at yet another charming sidewalk café. The time passed by quickly, and by late afternoon they were back at Gil’s hotel to collect their luggage before rushing in a taxi to the Gare de l’Est. At six o’clock that evening, the couple boarded the Orient Express and settled into a plush first-class sleeper for the overnight trip to Vienna. Not long after the train whistled its way out of the station, Gil and Eleanor ate an early supper in the gleaming dining car and returned to their berth. Eleanor was in a buoyant mood, still reveling in the memories of the gay afternoon and the comforting luxury of the Orient Express. But Gil turned somber as the French countryside whirred by and the train made its way eastward toward Vienna. “You don’t keep a sense of humor very long in Germany,” he told his wife. “I need to prepare you so that you are not too shocked. It’s not going to be fun.”

As she listened to Gil’s description of the stark conditions that awaited them in Vienna, Eleanor once again felt a sense of apprehension in the pit of her stomach. She interrupted him several times, demanding to know, “But is it safe? Is it safe for us?” As the train edged closer to the German border, those words echoed loudly as Gil described a city whose gaiety and sophisticated culture had been trampled by Hitler’s jackbooted forces. He cautioned his wife that she would see storm troopers everywhere—in hotels, restaurants, shops, and on the streets. “It’s a terrible sight,” said Gil. “It is heartbreaking, frightening, sickening.”

Gil, however, also tried to assure Eleanor that they would both be safe enough, but he quickly added that he no longer felt that their own safety mattered much. Ever since he had arrived in Vienna, he told her, he had come to realize how imperative it was to carry out the rescue mission. Back in Philadelphia, he had relied only on newspaper accounts to help him understand the situation that confronted thousands of Jewish families in Nazi Germany. Now that he was here, he had witnessed the true horror of Hitler’s campaign. Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of parents would do anything they could to send their children away. “You’ll see why once you’re in Vienna,” said Gil. “You’ll begin to understand much better than I can tell you.” In that moment aboard the Orient Express, Eleanor was struck by the dramatic change that had come over her husband in such a short period of time. “He looked older and so far away, and I couldn’t believe it had been only a few weeks since I had seen him,” she wrote. “He was so entirely caught up in the whole thing. Nothing in the past seemed to matter, only the present. He was completely absorbed.”

The two talked all through the night, and it wasn’t until nearly daybreak that they decided to get at least a little bit of sleep. At some point, Eleanor heard what sounded like the harsh clang of a metal bolt slamming against the outside of their compartment door. Gil explained that the doors were locked in compliance with Nazi orders that no one depart the train while it passed through a small portion of Czechoslovakia. The German army had moved into Czechoslovakia just five weeks earlier to complete the takeover of that country that had begun the previous year. Hitler himself had traveled to Prague to announce, in a speech from Prague Castle, that the country was now a German protectorate. As soon as the train crossed into Austria, the compartment doors were unlocked.

Eleanor’s chilling introduction to Nazi Germany occurred even before they arrived in Vienna. Not long after crossing the border that divided Czechoslovakia and Austria, the train pulled into Linz for a brief stop. It was a beautiful spring day, and Gil and Eleanor decided to stretch their legs and take a quick walk along the station platform. As she stepped off the train, Eleanor was confronted by the sobering sight of storm troopers lined up, two by two, alongside the train tracks. Moments later, she heard a loud, shrill voice blasting out of loudspeakers hoisted throughout the station. She immediately recognized it as the voice of Adolf Hitler.

Precisely at noon on that Friday, April 28, Hitler appeared before hundreds of members of the Reichstag, who had assembled in Berlin’s opera house, and delivered a fiery two-hour speech that was broadcast throughout all of Nazi Germany. Hitler’s speech came in response to a letter President Roosevelt had sent two weeks earlier, seeking Hitler’s promise that he would not attack or invade other countries in Europe. In his Reichstag address, Hitler rejected FDR’s request and vigorously defended his military actions. Raymond Geist sat with scores of other foreign diplomats who had been summoned to hear Hitler’s speech. Joseph Goebbels ordered millions of Germans to listen to the Führer in their homes, shops, factories—and train stations.