Queer Places:
Nathan Israel Department Store, Propststraße 8, 10178 Berlin, Germany
Wilfried Israel Museum, HaZore'a, Israel
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Wilfrid Berthold Jacob Israel (11 July 1899 – 1 June 1943) was an
Anglo-German businessman and philanthropist, born into a wealthy Anglo-German
Jewish family, who was active in the rescue of Jews from
Nazi
Germany, and who played a significant role in the
Kindertransport. Described as "gentle and courageous" and "intensely secretive", Wilfrid
Israel avoided public office and shunned publicity, but had, according to his
biographer Naomi Shepherd, an "almost hypnotic" ability to influence friends
and colleagues.
Martin Buber described him as "a man of great moral stature, dedicated to
the service of others".[1]
He was killed when his civilian passenger plane, en route from
Lisbon to
Bristol,
was
shot down by a
Luftwaffe
fighter patrol over the
Bay of Biscay.
Wilfrid Israel attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg and,
for a few months in 1911, the Hochalpines Lyceum in Zuoz/Institut Engiadina
(today
Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz) in Switzerland.
Wilfrid Israel's family owned
Israel's Department Store in Berlin, one of the largest and oldest stores
in pre-World War II Germany. From early in the Nazi period, Wilfrid Israel
used the business as a base from which to engineer the release of prisoners
from German concentration camps: many in the Nazi leadership had accounts at
the store and were never charged. Israel also financed the emigration of his
Jewish employees (roughly a third of the staff) by paying them two years
salary at the time they left Germany.
Philanthropy was only a small part of his rescue activities. Israel, though
arrested and beaten and followed on his journeys abroad by the
Gestapo,
attempted, through influential contacts in Britain, to persuade the British to
grant admission to "transit camps" in Britain, for Jews released from the
German concentration camps; eight thousand young men were saved in this way.
He also lobbied the Foreign Office directly for this purpose through visits to
the British embassy (recorded in the British National Archives). Less
officially, he formed a working partnership with
Frank
Foley, the British intelligence agent who was Passport Officer at the
British consulate in Berlin, vouching for the characters of Jews in line to
emigrate, while warning Foley of German agents who attempted to infiltrate.
Wilfrid Israel played a significant role in the
Kindertransport, the rescue of ten thousand German Jewish children after
the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938.[2]
By this time, most of the Jewish leadership in Germany had been arrested, and
Israel took over the running of the Hilfsverein, the German Jewish welfare and
emigration organization established at the turn of the century. He (as well as
others) urged to the British Anglo-Jewish leadership the rescue of German
Jewish children, but without their parents, to England. The Anglo-Jewish
leadership organized a deputation to the British prime minister. However, in
the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom, no Anglo-Jew was prepared to visit
Germany, and the British government was initially dubious about the
willingness of parents to part with their children. But a Quaker delegation,
all of whose members had previously worked with Wilfrid Israel on relief
matters (a link going back to the post World War I era) was sent out, and
directed by Israel and, together with the German women's organisation, the
Frauenbund, met with the parents and provided the British government with the
necessary reassurance.
The Israel firm, the largest department store in Berlin, was first
vandalised, then taken over by the Nazis, after a forced sale at a fraction of
its worth, and Wilfrid Israel left Germany, but returned on the eve of war to
organise the despatch of the last contingent of children, only leaving when
warned that his arrest was imminent. An example of Wilfred Israel's foresight
and compassion is that he arranged to give money and other support to many
employees of the Israel firm to aid them to flee the country, many ultimately
to America.
[3]
Settling in London, he first worked with
Bloomsbury House, the organization dealing with German Jewish refugees
interned as 'enemy aliens'. In 1941, he became research assistant on Germany
to a Royal Institution of International Affairs committee based at
Balliol College, Oxford, now working for the Foreign Office, and at the
same time advised the Refugee Department of the F.O. on movements of refugees
throughout Europe. Among his papers from that period are those dealing with
the question of German resistance to Hitler (which he dismissed, despite his
friendship with
Adam von Trott, one of its members).[4]
Israel was a descendant on his English mother's side of the first Chief
Rabbi of Britain. Contemporaries described him as an elegant, elusive figure
most famously inspiring the character Bernhard Landauer in
Christopher Isherwood's celebrated novel
Goodbye to Berlin. He figures prominently in his own right in the
autobiographical
Christopher and His Kind, by the same author.
He was a friend of
Albert Einstein, the philosopher
Martin Buber, and
Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of the state of Israel. In his
post-World War I refugee work, he was in contact with the British Quakers.
His Anglo Jewish connections included
Herbert Samuel, previously Home Secretary in the British government and
leader of the British
Liberal Party. These contacts were valuable in his later rescue missions.[5]
Brenda Bailey, daughter of a British Quaker mother and a German Quaker
father, wrote: "After Kristallnacht, leadership was again shown by the Jewish
businessman Wilfrid Israel, who contacted the Council for German Jewry in
London, informing them that extraordinary measures must now be taken to save
at least the children."[6]
On 26 March 1943 Israel left London for
Lisbon,
Portugal
and spent the next two months distributing certificates of entry to British
ruled Palestine, and investigating the situation of Jews on the peninsula;
during World War II the fascist regimes in Spain and Portugal sympathised with
Nazi
Germany but refused to hand over Jews to the Germans. Before Israel left
the peninsula, he had also formulated a plan to rescue Jewish children from
Vichy France – an enterprise partially carried out after his death. Israel was
killed, aged 43, on 1 June 1943 when
British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 was shot down over the
Bay of Biscay by eight German
Junkers Ju 88s.[9]
The Wilfrid Israel Museum in Kibbutz
HaZore'a,
Israel, is an archaeology and art museum dedicated to the memory of Wilfrid
Israel.[11]
The museum, which opened in 1951, houses Wilfrid's unique collection, to which
many artifacts have been added over the years. The museum displays have
permanent exhibitions of the art of India, China, Thailand, Cambodia, the art
of ancient Near East, and local archaeology. In addition, the museum holds
changing exhibitions of modern painting, sculpture, photography, and textiles.
It offers a wide range of community educational programs for children, youth
and adults, including guided tours of the museum's permanent and temporary
exhibitions as well as creative hands-on activities in the museum's art
workshop.
A film by award-winning filmmaker Yonatan Nir and producer Noam Shalev
premiered in Israel on 1 November 2016.[12]
The film –
The Essential Link: The Story of Wilfrid Israel is inspired by the biography
written by Naomi Shepherd. It tells the story of Wilfrid Israel's life-saving
activities, his connections with the founders of Kibbutz Hazorea and mostly
focuses on the last ten years of his life.
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Israel