50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany (11 page)

But Goldman’s letter did not accurately reflect the Brith Sholom plan. She was under the impression, for example, that Brith Sholom had recently received a letter from Under Secretary of State Welles that supposedly authorized the group to bring in up to 250 children above and beyond the regular quota limits for Germany and Austria. Welles never sent such a letter, and Gil, for his part, was aware that all of the children would have to qualify under the existing German quota. In his response to Goldman a few days later, Warren made no mention of the supposed letter from Welles. Instead he wrote that he had just spoken the day before with Brith Sholom officials “who assured me categorically that they do not intend to bring any immigrant children into the United States outside of the quota restrictions.”

These assurances did little to mollify Goldman’s group, which had been trying, along with others, to bring Jewish children into the United States ever since Hitler came to power. In the fall of 1933, representatives from the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, and B’nai B’rith formed a committee to develop a plan for rescuing Jewish children living in Germany. They debated the matter for several months before the project was placed in the hands of German Jewish Children’s Aid, which was led by Cecilia Razovsky, a social worker who strenuously advocated for admitting Jewish refugees. After a period of frustrating negotiations with various immigration officials, an initial group of ten Jewish children from Germany finally arrived in New York in November 1934. But news of their arrival was quickly followed by stinging criticism from a group that called itself the American Coalition of Patriotic, Civil and Fraternal Societies, which accused the government of cooperating in the “systematic importation of indigent alien children.” German Jewish Children’s Aid also found it difficult to find enough Jewish families willing to take in children. As a result, only about one hundred children were admitted between November 1934 and April 1935, after which Razovsky’s group stopped sending for more children. Although the group later resumed its rescue efforts, it was constantly frustrated by the rigid immigration rules and managed to bring in a total of fewer than four hundred children by the end of 1938. These children typically arrived one or two at a time rather than as part of larger groups. The Brith Sholom plan differed significantly because of its attempt to bring in a larger group of children all together.

Razovsky, meanwhile, had recently worked out an agreement with the Labor Department to bring in twenty children each month. But bureaucratic delays and other administrative obstacles made even that modest goal impossible. “We not only are not taking large groups, but we are even slowing up on those whom we have ordered . . . because of the long delays in the quota,” Razovsky wrote in late December 1938 to the head of Atlanta’s Hebrew Orphan Home, who had asked her about plans to bring in Jewish children from the Reich. “We get people coming in all day long who do nothing but scold us and regard us as personally responsible because the children cannot come in.”

As conditions in Nazi Germany deteriorated, Razovsky and others grew more frustrated than ever with the rigid limits imposed by American immigration policies. Razovsky received a letter from the wife of Rabbi Wise, asking whether it might be possible to bring in the young daughter from a Jewish family she knew in Dusseldorf, Germany. “Since the quota waiting list is so long, I am afraid the children whom we register now won’t come in for at least another year,” replied Razovsky. A few weeks later, Mrs. Wise wrote again to Razovsky, this time as the chairman of the Child Adoption Committee of the Free Synagogue, the New York City synagogue led by her husband. Once again, Razovsky could offer nothing but discouragement. “I am afraid there will not be any children available for adoption in the near future in view of the terrible crowded condition of the quota at this time,” she wrote. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Razovsky’s group became even more inundated with pleas for help. “Persons who received affidavits some time ago now want us to use our influence with Washington to get them out of Germany quickly,” Razovsky wrote to a woman in Erie, Pennsylvania, who was concerned about the worsening situation in Germany. “Of course that is absolutely out of the question. There is nothing we can do to help these thousands of trapped unfortunates. They have no preference on the quota and their turns will come two years hence possibly.”

Once it began circulating around Philadelphia that Gil had taken on the project, several of the city’s Jewish leaders decided to try and talk him out of it. Some, convinced that he would almost certainly fail, were worried that the project would make it even harder for other rescue efforts to proceed. Others feared that it would generate additional backlash against Jewish groups throughout the United States. In early March, a group of men dropped by Gil’s office only to find out that he was in Washington that day for a meeting at the State Department. They made an appointment to see him once he returned home. “A few days later, three of the most important and leading Philadelphia Jews called on Gil . . . and told him we must drop any idea or plan that we had at once,” wrote Eleanor. “They told him that he could not possibly succeed.”

Although Eleanor did not name her husband’s visitors, she did identify one of the men who arrived the next day with a similar message: Kurt Peiser, the director of Philadelphia’s Federation of Jewish Charities. Peiser, who was a few years older than Gil, had been born in Germany and brought to the United States with his family when he was twelve. He had worked for a variety of Jewish charitable groups in Milwaukee, Cincinnati, and Detroit before moving to Philadelphia. As Eleanor described the meeting, Peiser wasted no time in insisting that Gil “must scrap this idea at once. Nothing good could come of it [and] only danger and fiasco was in store for him.” Peiser pleaded with Gil to abandon the rescue mission. “Surely, you would not want to subject your wife to this danger and embarrassment,” he said. “If you continue with this plan, we will be obliged to take all necessary steps to prevent it.”

Gil listened politely, but he had no intention of backing down. “He was perfectly willing to risk failure, discouragement or embarrassment,” wrote Eleanor. “He knew the chances of failure were much better than those for success. But he didn’t see why, if he were willing to go to Germany on this mission, he should be prevented from doing so.”

While fears of an anti-Semitic backlash certainly had a role in this opposition, professional jealousy almost certainly also played a part. Why should Brith Sholom—a group that had never before been involved in refugee work—now get credit for saving children when other organizations—including some that had been trying for years to bring in refugees—had met with little success in their own efforts?

Throughout late February and early March, the pressure mounted. “This line of talk continued everywhere Gil went—at lunch and in his club,” wrote Eleanor. “One would think we were trying to do something illegal or wicked, even degrading, and we grew more and more confused. It seemed like such a decent, desirable thing to be doing.”

As Eleanor knew better than anyone, her husband was not a man easily swayed or discouraged. But even he began to wonder if he was doing the right thing. “I don’t know what to do or where to go for advice,” he told Eleanor one evening in March. “I don’t know whether we should abandon this thing or not.” Eleanor’s spirits fell even as she continued to ask the couple’s friends and acquaintances if they would be willing to sponsor the children and submit personal affidavits. “I began to feel as though I was doing all this for nothing,” she wrote.

Gil realized that he needed a fresh perspective. He needed to talk with someone who could offer sound, impartial advice on whether or not to proceed. He reached for the telephone and called Rufus Jones. A retired philosophy professor at nearby Haverford College, Jones was one of the country’s most prominent Quakers. Gil, of course, also knew that Jones had led the Quaker delegation that had gone to Germany in December in the unsuccessful effort to convince Nazi officials to ease some of the burdens on Jews trying to leave the Reich.

Jones, who grew up in a long-established Quaker family in Maine, was one of the founders, in 1917, of the American Friends Service Committee, the well-respected group originally formed to help civilian victims during World War I. All during the 1930s, the group had been doing whatever it could to help refugees escape from Nazi Germany. Several weeks before Kristallnacht, Clarence Pickett—another leading Quaker official immersed in rescue efforts—had traveled to Europe and met with Raymond Geist at the American embassy in Berlin. “We saw Mr. Geist, the American consul general, who certainly had one tale of woe,” Pickett wrote in his private journal in September 1938. “The preceding Saturday 3,000 people had applied for visas to America. He was simply deluged with people who had heart-rending tales of woe . . . The large consular office was swarmed with people when we were there and that, [Geist] said, was a comparatively quiet day.”

Jones, who had taught at Haverford for more than forty years, continued to live in a comfortable stone house on the campus since his retirement in 1934. He readily agreed to see Gil and Eleanor, inviting the couple to his home the following afternoon. They arrived at Haverford in the midst of a swirling snowstorm. Making their way carefully through the snow-covered campus, they found it difficult to find Jones’s house. Finally, as they slowed in front of one of the buildings, they spotted a small, gray-haired, elderly man, bundled against the cold with his suit collar turned up. It was Jones, who had ventured outside to look for his guests.

Inside his cozy study, Jones poured cups of steaming tea while Gil explained the details of the Brith Sholom mission that he had been asked to carry out. He told the retired Quaker professor about the home in Collegeville that was large enough to house fifty children. He made sure to mention that Brith Sholom members had promised to raise enough money to care for the children once they arrived in this country. “We will need nothing from the public,” said Gil. “But we have no pull with anybody. Just a plan that has not been accepted or turned down at the State Department.” He also mentioned the strenuous efforts to block him from moving ahead with the project. Jones listened quietly as Gil described his predicament. Gil also had several questions for Jones about current conditions inside Germany. “Could we even go to Germany at this time?” he wondered. “Would we be in danger and be persecuted or attacked in any way physically? How were Americans being treated in Germany? How would American Jews be received there?” Gil was almost pleading with Jones for advice.

Jones seemed reluctant at first to answer Gil’s questions, particularly the ones about whether or not Americans would be safe in Germany. After all, the situation there seemed to be changing with each passing day. He and his fellow Quakers had not been threatened during their own visit a few months earlier, but who knew whether or not the situation might have grown worse since then? After listening to Gil’s detailed description of the proposed rescue project, however, Jones did not hesitate to offer encouragement. “Since you have the house and the money and the plan, I feel you should go,” said Jones. “Indeed, you must go and find out if your plan will work.” It was the surge of adrenaline Gil needed. “On our way back to Philadelphia, we decided that we wouldn’t stop now,” wrote Eleanor. “We would proceed as if we were going to Germany.”

Although Gil did not know it, the State Department was also proceeding on that assumption. On March 2, Secretary of State Cordell Hull signed a confidential cable that was sent out at 6:00
P.M.
to the American embassy in Berlin. “The Department desires you to obtain from each of the offices, Berlin, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Vienna, a statement giving the number of German-born children under fourteen years of age who have been refused . . . visas during the period from July 1, 1938, to February 28, 1939.” The purpose of the cable, aimed at all of the American consulates in Nazi Germany, was to narrow down the exact number of children who might be potential candidates for the Brith Sholom rescue project. It took until March 23 for the embassy in Berlin to report back to Washington. “Visas have been withheld from some five hundred twenty-six children by reason of insufficient support,” Raymond Geist wrote in his telegram to Hull. “Latter figure is of necessity [an] estimate only owing to lack of exact statistics.”

One day later Messersmith received a one-page memo from Warren, in the visa division, along with a copy of Geist’s cable from the previous day. The precise number of children mentioned in the cable “would appear to include a category of children in whom Congressman Leon Sacks [the Philadelphia Democrat who had first introduced Gil to Messersmith] is interested. If any of these children should receive assurances of support, they would appear to be otherwise admissible into the United States immediately because the cablegram indicates that their turns have already been reached on the waiting lists in Germany.”

Although Eleanor had no way of knowing at the time that the State Department had now identified a precise group of eligible children, she certainly knew that she would have to work faster in order to complete the necessary paperwork. “Every day I did as much as time allowed, worked very hard and paid very little attention to anything else.” She had discovered there was a lot more to the process than simply filling out the forms that made up each individual affidavit. Letters from employers were required to confirm the salary of a prospective sponsor. Several of the affidavits were coming from friends who, like Gil, were self-employed. All of them were required to furnish a copy of the previous year’s tax return. Bank statements, life insurance policies, a complete listing of stocks and bonds, real estate property deeds—the list went on and on. “No one who had offered to make out an affidavit had realized how personal and complete a financial statement I required,” she wrote. “There is one thing in this country no one wants to do, and that is reveal his income tax return.”