... And the Policeman Smiled (8 page)

The first
Kindertransport
out of Vienna left on 11 December, just an hour or two ahead of the deadline set by Eichmann.

One of the few children to be eventually reunited with her family was Gerta Jassem, though by then, six years on, she was a married woman. She said her goodbyes in April 1938 at the Westbahnhof in Vienna.

My father placed the single suitcase on to the overhead rack of the compartment and then as it was very crowded had to step down to the platform. We children crowded round the window to receive uncertain last-minute instructions. Nothing new or really important was said. The desperate hopelessness of the people left behind was not really grasped by us.

One of Gerta's last memories of parting was her mother asking her what food she wanted:

I assumed she meant as a sort of farewell meal, so I chose my favourite dish,
Wiener Schnitzel
, and I was so disappointed when I opened a brown paper bag and found instead meat patties on a roll.

Another point of issue between Gerta and her mother was the bright idea of hollowing out the heels of her daughter's walking boots.

She hid my watch, a gold bracelet and a few gold coins. This made me very conscious of my feet as I tried to walk nonchalantly in laced-up boots while feeling scared that someone would notice.

The Vienna
Kindertransport
stopped at Cologne to pick up a small group of boys in their mid-teens. Among them was Ernest Jacob:

Most of us knew each other. There was an exception, a chap by the name of Meyer who none of us had ever heard of. He looked Jewish and about our age though he could have been older. He stayed with us for the whole journey and when we were in England,
but he never made friends and had nothing in common with us. Later he went to Canada and was caught spying. It turned out that he had been planted on our transport.

There was some comfort in journeying by train. It was a closed world in which the inhabitants, though unwilling companions, could take strength from knowing that they were all part of the same mad plot. Gerta Jassem shared a compartment with seven other girls and boys aged between six and thirteen, all strangers to each other.

We ate our sandwiches, exchanged stories, told jokes. The monotonous rhythm of the train made us sleepy. I remember putting my head on my arms and leaning forward on to the folded table in front of my seat. The next girl rested on my back and this started a sort of chain reaction of bodies. We woke up whenever the train stopped, and when we were at a station we got out for a while. Then there was lots of shouting from one track to another before we started again. We had no idea where we were, though we thought we had crossed from Austria into Germany. It was next morning before one of the supervisors came to tell us that we were near the Dutch border.

This was the moment when regrets at parting from family and friends were suppressed by the fear of being sent back.

Two uniformed, brown-booted Germans, one wearing the SS insignia, entered our compartment. They pointed at the suitcases they wanted opened. They never uttered a word and nor did we. We simply watched and tried to look unconcerned as they searched the cases. There was a rumour that if just one of the group was discovered smuggling money or jewellery the whole transport would be sent back. Finally, they left the train and we saw them standing in groups on the platform.

It was only when the train started moving that we began to relax. As we gathered speed, someone shouted: ‘Look, we're in no-man's-land!' Somehow, the countryside did look different; less ordered, perhaps, or maybe there were just more houses. Anyway, what did it matter? We jumped about, cheered and sang. We opened the windows wide and held out our handkerchiefs, scarves, jackets to wave at the deserted fields.

Of those who had crossed the border a few days earlier on the Berlin-Hamburg
Kindertransport
, Nina Liebermann and her sister were made more nervous of the SS guards by the adult passengers who were sharing their compartment. Everyone was so much on edge, the girls were sure they were not alone in having something to hide.

We stopped for customs inspection on the German side. I tried to look unconcerned as the cases were searched. I was certain I would lose my earrings. Jews were not allowed to take gold or silver in any form out of the country. But they left us alone. Suddenly the train started to move, first slowly, then gathering speed for a short way before stopping again. Two men in uniform appeared in our compartment. I was sure they had come back for my earrings. But how could that be? It dawned on me that they were Dutch border guards. They went over to a conservatively-dressed passenger in a corner seat and asked him to go with them. He did not come back. We heard later that a German spy had been caught.

Johnny Blunt was less fortunate in his encounter with German customs.

I was very proud of my stamp collection which I kept in my rucksack. An SA man found it and put it on the seat beside me while he started searching someone else. When his back was turned I took the stamp album and sat on it. He must have realised because he turned and gave me a smack across the face. He took the stamp album and told me: ‘You can start another collection when you're in England.'

The tension was increased by the sight of German troops massed along the Dutch frontier.

‘I remember the train standing for a long, long time at the border,' remembers Kurt Weinburg. ‘I watched from the window as German soldiers marched up and down. They were nothing to do with us; they were just drilling. But there was a tremendous sense of relief when we got into the Dutch station.'

The contrast between the sullen dismissal by the Nazi guards and the welcome from the Dutch refugee workers could not have been greater. All along the platform were smiling women with
trolleys loaded with food. They handed out cakes and sandwiches and chocolate ('which had a bitter flavour') and offered lemonade drinks ('the best lemonade any of us had ever tasted'). If there was time in hand or the train was held up, the children were treated to huge meals of meat and beans. (‘It was as if we had never eaten before.') Presents and games added to the party atmosphere. Years on, many a
Kindertransport
girl would not be parted from the rag doll pressed into her arms by a total stranger on a Dutch railway station.

The older boys had their own way of celebrating. ‘We lads from Cologne had a couple of bottles of egg flip,' admits Ernest Jacob. ‘I can't tell you how drunk we were.'

The frantic activity in Berlin and Vienna and at the Dutch border to keep up the flow of child refugees was matched in London by efforts to make the journey worthwhile. Before much else was achieved, clearly there had to be some sort of accommodation between the newly-formed Movement for the Care of Children from Germany and the older established Children's Inter-Aid Committee. In principle, they had everything to gain by joining forces, but there was an underlying hostility at Inter-Aid to what some supporters regarded as a Jewish takeover of a nondenominational body. This was reflected in the lengthy discussions to find a name for the cooperative venture that accounted for all sensitivities. Eventually, a unanimous blessing was given The World Movement for the Rescue of Children from Germany; British Inter-Aid Committee, a forbidding and unmemorable title which was impossible to take seriously.

Even in its shortened form the Movement for the Care of Children from Germany failed to live up to the emotional impact of Save the Children, one of the original sponsors of the Movement, whose offices they shared in the early days. It was not until March 1939 that all previous attempts at a suitable epithet were cast aside in favour of the Refugee Children's Movement, or, more commonly, the R C M, the name we will now stick to even when referring to events preceding its inauguration.

On 29 November, the RCM moved to 69 Great Russell Street, where there was office space for the extra staff needed to handle the huge volume of correspondence.

Thousands of letters from all parts of Germany and Austria were received … letters begging for help, enclosing photographs and particulars. Many were so touchingly written that it required a hard heart to consign them to files and indexes; yet, how were we to know which children to choose since we could not take all? We obviously could not adopt the principle of ‘first write, first come', and how were we to be sure that all the details in the letters were absolutely correct?

Thus the plea of mitigation contained in the RCM's first annual report for the piles of correspondence left unanswered or returned to Germany. But allowing for the bureaucratic nicety (did it really matter if all the details were not ‘absolutely correct'?), the RCM was right in believing that operations had to be directed from Berlin and Vienna. However imperfect, the scheme depended on the authority of those in the front line. To have started an indiscriminate selection of children from London would have been fatal.

The ground rule was for lists of names with photographs and health certificates to be sent over to the RCM, who would then go to the Home Office for travel permits. In theory, nothing could have been simpler, but with the vagaries of the European airmail, the irresistible urge of the German police to demand last-minute changes, and the understandable dithering of families trying to come to terms with an indefinite parting, delays and mistakes were inevitable.

The Home Office signalled a willingness to cooperate, as far as circumstances would allow. On the credit side, the waiving of restrictions imposed on adult refugees enabled the Home Office to reduce the formalities of immigration to a relatively simple travel document. Not even passports were needed, though many did bring this last record of German citizenship. The hold-up came with the processing of the entry permits. The aliens department of the Home Office, the first stopping-off point for
Kindertransport
applications, was woefully understaffed. By the end of 1938 there were some 10,000 files waiting for attention, while those who were supposed to be clearing the backlog spent most of their time answering the telephone to callers pleading for immediate action to save friends and relatives. More civil servants were drafted in late January when the aliens department moved to larger offices, but this development barely kept pace with the increased demand for visas.

Even when applications had cleared the aliens department, they had to go to records for the issue of permits and from thence to passport control office for stamping before being posted back to Germany.

Colin Coote, a leader writer on
The Times
, who was soon to adopt a
Kindertransport
boy, wrote to Lord Winterton at the Foreign Office claiming that allegations of red tape were too numerous to overlook. Winterton replied unconvincingly that delays were all the fault of the Germans. But the refugee movement was not entirely free from blame. Reading between the lines of RCM reports suggests that Home Office tardiness was matched by RCM muddle.

Volunteer workers were strong on enthusiasm but weak on experience. This would not have mattered quite so much if there had been strong leadership. But those at the top like Norman Bentwich and Wyndham Deedes did not see themselves as executive officers, while Mami Bentwich who took on the role of organising secretary was easily diverted by competing responsibilities. Through to the spring of 1939 the chief authority seems to have rested with a Major Langdon, whose military style, deriving from the ‘do as I tell you' school of management, was ill-suited to what was essentially a cooperative venture. Later problems with authoritarian, even anti-Semitic, wardens of hostels and training camps can be traced back to appointments made at this time.

A powerful compensating factor was the recruitment of two outstanding volunteer workers, both idiosyncratic personalities who were used to having things their own way. Lola Hahn-Warburg was the daughter of the Hamburg banker Max Warburg, wife to Berlin industrialist Rudo Hahn, and sister-in-law of the educationalist Kurt Hahn of Gordonstpun fame. With her husband and two children, she came to Britain in September 1938 after a tip-off that she was on a Nazi blacklist of outspoken Zionists. Two months later she was part of the Samuel delegation to the Home Office to urge government support for the
Kindertransporte
. It was not a role that she welcomed. Trying to make a home with what little her family had managed to bring out, and still struggling with a language which to her dying day she delivered with unmistakable Teutonic precision, she had much else to occupy her. But Norman Bentwich, who knew of her active participation in the emigration of young people from Germany, both on behalf of the
Reichsvertretung
and of
Youth Aliyah
, pressed her to go along as a first-hand witness to the suffering of Jewish children under Nazi rule. After that it was a short step to the cramped office at the RCM, where Lola Hahn-Warburg became the reigning expert on children who were at odds with their foster parents or teachers or employers, or simply with themselves. Bearing in mind that at least one in ten of those who came over on the
Kindertransporte
ended up with psychological or physical disabilities, it was quite a responsibility to take on.

The second gifted amateur to strengthen the backbone of the RCM was Elaine Blond. The youngest daughter of Michael Marks of Marks and Spencer, she was wealthy, talented and frustrated by inactivity.

It was at dinner with (brother) Simon and his wife Miriam when I first heard about the RCM. I knew of its existence, of course. Anyone who read the
Jewish Chronicle
had to be aware of the story. What came as a surprise was the evident lack of planning for such a mammoth enterprise. ‘Someone ought to do something,' I said. ‘You're right,' said Simon. ‘Why don't
you
do something?'

And that was how Elaine Blond became involved, initially as a fund raiser but soon as treasurer of the RCM. She and Lola Hahn-Warburg made a strong partnership. Both were self-willed women, confident in their abilities and their right to lead, who could get things done by dint of perseverance, cajolery and a hint of retribution for those foolish enough to resist their demands.