The Other Schindlers (21 page)

Trude Simonsohn had known Schindler when he moved to Frankfurt in 1958. She was active in the Frankfurt Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Aged 73 she told a Reuters’ journalist: ‘He was a burned-out soul. It was as if all the energy which he had in his life was exhausted in this rescue action … You could sense this from him. A person who had so much strength in those terrible times couldn’t find his feet again.’
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Yitzhak Stern, who worked with Schindler all through his rescue, gave
testimony
in May 1962 at a meeting of survivors with Schindler. He said:

On 4 December 1939 Oskar rushed in and told them about the creation of the Ghetto and the rounding-up of Jews, but no one listened to him. Later they remembered: ‘Schindler had told us about the plans, and we, stupid people, didn’t pay attention.’ Stern’s testimony even covered Schindler’s respect for Jewish
traditions
: he created a special Jewish cemetery when a Mrs Hofstater died and she was buried with all appropriate ritual. As Stern said: ‘It was the only establishment of a Jewish cemetery in occupied Europe …’

After describing the horrors of the Goleszów train rescue, Stern concluded: ‘In the Hebrew language there are three terms, three grades: person, man, human being. I believe there is a fourth one – Schindler.’
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The final word on Schindler should be given to someone who knew him well over a long period: Dr Moshe Bejski, who described him with a Yiddish word,
mensch
. This is usually translated as ‘a decent fellow’ or ‘a good person’.
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He said Schindler had been brought up as a
bon vivant
and liked the good life. Born in 1912, he was only in his early thirties when he came to Poland to make money, but when he saw the way the Jews were suffering, he felt he should do something:

Dr Bejski said this was an example of his great kindness, but he admitted that he treated his wife badly. ‘He was very cruel to her.’ Bejski told me he was the only German he did not fear. Bejski worked doing technical drawings in the office:

‘When Schindler visited he would sometimes light a cigarette and then leave the rest of the packet on my desk. They were extremely valuable. Two cigarettes could buy half a loaf of bread in the camp.’

Schindler was a man of complex motivations like many of the rescuers. He found his niche during the war but his life after it was a disaster, and in fact he was bailed out by the Jews he had rescued for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, at the crucial moment in his life he was a benevolent and true rescuer to his 1,100 Jews.

Henk Huffener (1923–2006)
. Henk’s family were all involved in the Resistance. His father, Hendrik, who was an active anti-fascist from 1935, began holding Resistance meetings at their home in 1941. ‘My father was an incredibly kind, brave person. He never showed any anxiety at all.’
32
The family consisted of Hendrik, his nine children and their stepmother. Their own mother, Wilhelmina Huffener-Merks, had died in 1932. The family were Catholics, which Henk said has no significance for him.
33
They lived in a remote area in Bilthoven on the edge of a very large estate because his father became site manager for a hospital and sanatorium for TB patients. Its isolation was invaluable for the Resistance work.
34

Henk’s family was musical and at weekends they gave chamber concerts with friends who joined their Resistance group. However, their first exploit in 1941 was disastrous, when a Dr Browser, who had established radio contact with the Dutch government in exile in London, asked Henk and his younger brother Joep to report on German military establishments and troop
movements
. Henk admitted:

Henk, who was born in Utrecht on 24 February 1923, says he was a precocious youth and by the age of 15 already had a mix of friends which included Jews, atheists, Quakers and Protestants.
36
His formal education ended when he was 17, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands. He was very close to his older sister Ann and brother Joep who were the most involved in the Resistance.

Henk has also written of the great influence on him of Betty Cadbury, a Quaker from Birmingham who married Kees Boeke, who ran the Werkpaats School – ‘an eccentric, progressive boarding school’. Betty introduced him to several
interesting
people – Victor Gollancz, the publisher; Fenner Brockway MP; and Corder Catchpole, another Quaker who was actively involved in alleviating distress caused by the Nazis and who was very clear about the fate of the Jews. He, like the Boekes, had been interned during the First World War for pacifist activities. However, in Europe in the 1930s, ‘Quakers decided to avoid the word “pacifist” and described themselves as “Friends of Peace”, because the Nazis assumed that pacifism demonstrated a political involvement with the Communists, who were regarded as traitors’.
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Henk wrote: ‘Because of her [Betty] I became an ardent pacifist and saw little point in armed resistance. Armed resistance was mainly counter-productive and at the time cost countless lives.’
38
The Boekes had employed two German Jewish teachers in their school in 1940, but at the end of 1941 it became
forbidden
to employ Jews. Betty, as an English woman, had already attracted the Nazis’ interest and as she had considerable incriminating material at the school, such as the addresses of German Jews and books written by them, Henk offered to move the stuff to a safe hiding place, in case the Nazis came searching. He wrote: ‘I filled up a handcart with boxes not knowing what was in them.’
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But not all their work involved helping Jews: his sister Ann, with her husband Jeff Le Jeuneand brother Joep, ran a ‘Swiss road’ escape route which:

In 1942 the group had their first major challenge when they were asked to
evacuate
a kibbutz of German Zionists, known as the Hachshara home, in Loosdrecht:

It was of course very dangerous and on one occasion, when Henk was escorting a very Jewish-looking girl who spoke no Dutch, he was stopped by some German soldiers. ‘He kissed her, explained to the Germans that they must be off or they would be in trouble with their parents and got away with it.’ However, it was that girl’s father who subsequently showed Henk his First World War medal sitting on a black velvet cushion, with the words: ‘That is an Iron Cross First Class. I am exempted from deportation.’ Henk pleaded with him not to believe that, but unfortunately the advice went unheeded.
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The question of Jews and the Iron Cross was of great significance, particularly amongst assimilated Jews. Jews who saw themselves as quite assimilated felt safe in many countries. At the start of the First World War, the main Jewish
organisations
encouraged Jews to sign up to the armed forces to show their commitment to their homeland. One hundred thousand Jews fought for Germany in the First World War, including Anne Frank’s father Otto and Wilfrid Israel’s uncle Richard and his cousin Ernst. They represented one-fifth of the Jewish population and, whilst 12,000 fell in battle, 30,000 were decorated and 2,000 became officers.
43
The graves of those who fell can still be seen in the Weissensee cemetery in Berlin – the largest Jewish graveyard in Europe. ‘An entire section honours the fallen of 1914–18 with rows of little white headstones lined up with military precision.’
They were erected in 1927 when ‘it is still possible to honour German Jews for having died as patriots for the Fatherland’.
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Those surviving soldiers, particularly those who had been decorated, felt very secure. But German Jews who regarded themselves as ‘Germans of the Mosaic Persuasion’, who had joined wholeheartedly in Prussian jingoism in 1914, were eventually to be disappointed.
45
They had believed they were an integral part of German culture:

Else Pintus described an incident in Danzig in the summer of 1941. Mr David, who owned a furniture store, was queuing for food when a woman told him it was just for Germans. He replied, ‘I’m just as German as you. I served four years on the German front.’ Someone must have reported this to the Gestapo, and although he was ill in bed, they dragged him off and eight days later he was dead.
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Dr Arthur Arndt, who was hidden in Berlin with six other Jews throughout the war, had been awarded the Iron Cross for his services as an army doctor in the First World War. On 16 August 1935, one month before the Nuremberg Laws were passed, he was awarded a Cross of Honour certificate, again for his work during the First World War. In July 1938 he was told that Jewish doctors were being taken off the Medical Register and could no longer call themselves physicians or treat Aryan patients. The Jewish doctors were to be known as
Krankenbehandler
(healers for the Jewish infirm).
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Finally, in Hungary, all
exemptions
for Jews, even war heroes, were revoked on 15 October 1944 when the Szálasi government came to power.

These proud soldiers would have done better to remember the events of 1 November 1916 when, as the war began to go against the Germans, the High Command – in the person of the Prussian War Minister, Adolf Wild von Hohenborn – thought the Jews would make a good scapegoat for the Germans’ lack of success. It was decided that a census of Jews would show that they were shirking their military duty for the Fatherland. However, because of the
Jews’ earnest patriotism, the
Judenzahlung
(Jew Count or Jewish Census)
demonstrated
that not only were the Jews serving enthusiastically, but they were volunteering disproportionately for front-line duty. The results of the survey were never published because they did not serve the purpose for which the exercise had been intended.
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Henk found hiding places for many Jews, including the Da Costa family and Bep and Mani Aalsvel, who were temporarily sheltered in the family home:

Henk and Joep needed money and ration cards to look after their charges. Joep raided distribution offices and:

Henk was arrested in Arnhem in March 1943 while visiting some of his
kibbutzniks
in hiding there. He was only arrested for minor offences and eventually found himself as a slave labourer in Germany. He got out in a poor condition. He was anxious to return to his underground activities and some friends gave him the key to their empty apartment in Amsterdam. It appeared that a young Jewish violinist and his wife had taken refuge there. They had no food and no ration cards, so could not buy anything. They were so desperate that they said they wanted to kill themselves. Henk promised to help them, but when he woke up the next day, he found he was too late. He was inconsolable and this led to a nervous breakdown. He was prescribed pills and told to rest but, as the Germans were after him again, he had to go into hiding.
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