The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Gilbert, Martin

  Shamai Kizelshtein’s sister Mina recalled: ‘Once, Schade asked my father to find him a good housekeeper. I offered myself as a housekeeper, and since that day I saw Mr Schade every day and I had the opportunity to talk to him. One day Mr Schade ran into the kitchen and shouted in German: “I am ashamed of being a German!” When I heard these words from him, it occurred to me that this was a man who could help us.’

  Mina Kizelshtein told one of the young leaders of the Jewish resistance in Bialystok, Haika Grossman, about this incident: ‘She asked me to check if Mr Schade would be willing to give her a letter confirming that she worked in his office. She would only use this letter to obtain an identity card of a Polish woman. Schade agreed, and thanks to him Haika received her Polish identity card.’

  During the first anti-Jewish ‘Action’ in Bialystok, when Schade hid Mina Kizelshtein and her family, Mina recalled that ‘he personally cooked for us and brought the food to the attic where we were hiding. During the second “Action” he hid Mary Kaplan and me. After the summer “Action”, a German called Bole brought his Jewish wife to Schade, and Schade allowed her to stay at his place for a few weeks. The partisans from the woods came to him too, and he gave them food. I remember how the late Chaim Lapchensko left his house with a bag full of foodstuffs on his back.’

  Several times, Schade drove to the woods in the factory truck, carrying under the bonnet weapons, ammunition, medications and food for the Jewish partisans. ‘Everything was wrapped in rags,’ Mina Kizelshtein recalled. ‘In order to avoid inspection, Schade wore a Nazi Party badge. In his house, meetings of the underground anti-Nazi cell were held, chaired by Haika Grossman, in which participated Otto Beneschek, Bole, and Arthur Schade. When the Germans retreated from Bialystok, Schade didn’t go with them, but joined the partisans instead.’ All the actions he took, she added, ‘were at great personal risk, out of his own humanitarian principles, and out of respect for human life’.13

  As Mina Kizelshtein noted, another German who joined the anti-Nazi underground was Otto Beneschek, a Sudeten German and a Communist, who was in the city hiding from the Gestapo under a false identity. As manager of another textile mill situated on the border of the ghetto, he employed both Jews and Poles, and was instrumental in making it possible for Jews to smuggle arms into the ghetto. Beneschek also provided Jews with false documents and money, and introduced another Sudeten German, Kudlatschek, to the Jewish resistance organization.14

  It was Kudlatschek who was in charge of the motor pool of all the textile mills in the city. A number of Jews left Bialystok in Kudlatschek’s own car, drove to partisan territory, and transported arms to the Jewish resistance organization in the ghetto, as well as making contact with Jews in Grodno and other distant, and for Jews, inaccessible towns.

  The Jews of the Bialystok ghetto were also helped by a number of German soldiers stationed in the city, from whom they obtained a few weapons and several radios. Arms also reached the ghetto from Walter, a Viennese, and Rischel, a German, both of whom worked as storekeepers in the Beutenlager, or ‘booty stores’. Until they were posted to a front-line unit, they enabled the Jews working for them in the stores to take arms back into the ghetto. Two other Germans in Bialystok were sentenced to death for helping Jews.15

  Another German, Otto Busse, was in charge of a painting shop attached to the Waffen SS units in Bialystok. Some of his employees were Jews from the ghetto; through them he learned what was happening to the Jews, and helped them to smuggle food and clothing into the ghetto. Later he recalled how one of his Jewish workers, Hassia Bornstein, had been terrified when he first told her that he believed her to be a disguised Jew, and how she subsequently wept in relief when he told her that he would help her and her friends. He also recalled how Hassia Bornstein and Haika Grossman had smuggled rifles concealed in old stove pipes to the partisans in broad daylight: ‘Together we faced death and extermination every day.’

  When the Bialystok ghetto was liquidated, Busse supplied arms and medicines to Jewish partisans in the forests outside the city. As the Red Army approached the city in 1944, the partisans offered him their protection, but he declined to seek refuge from the Soviet victors, telling those who were keen to help him: ‘There is a collective German guilt, and I do not want to be an exception.’ Taken into captivity by the Soviets, he spent five years in a forced labour camp near Kiev before being repatriated to Germany.

  Disillusioned with life in West Germany, in 1969 Busse moved to Israel, settling in a village in Galilee whose inhabitants were mostly Swiss Christians. In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, he revealed that after his story had been published in Germany some eight years earlier, ‘I was denounced as a traitor to the fatherland and Jew-lover.’ Things got ‘so bad’, he said, especially his treatment by ex-soldiers, that he had to give up his position as department manager in a Darmstadt store and leave the city.16

  In Holland two Germans, Hans-Georg Calmeyer and Dr Gerhard Wander, conspired to cheat the Third Reich of one of its cherished aims: a Dutch population that would be freed from Jewish blood so that the Dutch people could take their place as the closest ‘Aryan’ nation to Germany and be an integral part of the ‘superior’ race. Calmeyer, who in 1933 had been barred from practising law in Germany for a year because he had refused to dismiss a Jewish employee, was invited in 1942 by a friend in the German administration in Holland to join the General Commissariat for Administration and Justice, and to work there examining disputed racial cases. At that point in time, someone with only two Jewish grandparents, although deprived of many rights, would not be deported. Calmeyer was willing to accept all sorts of dubious documents, and to allow individuals who were entirely Jewish to assert, for example, that one of their Jewish parents had not been their actual parent, or to claim that a grandparent who was in fact entirely Jewish from cradle to grave had been converted to Christianity.

  Calmeyer’s helper in this work of deception, Dr Gerhard Wander, was a fellow lawyer, whose job in Holland was to assess which firms and businesses were Jewish-owned. Those deemed to be Jewish-owned would be transferred to non-Jews. Wander, like Calmeyer, made every effort—assisted by his wife Jacoba who, in the words of their son Gerhard, ‘shared and risked it all’ with his father—‘to introduce doubt and ambiguity. He would accept the most spurious of claims, such as that of a Mrs Polak, who claimed that none of her four children by her late husband were in fact his, but were the illegitimate offspring of “a certain Muller”, a non-Jew, who was probably dead.’ There were so many such cases, all of which Wander and Calmeyer accepted, that on one occasion Wander remarked: ‘I never suspected that Jewish women were so unfaithful.’17

  In a statement to Yad Vashem, Julia Henriquez Senior, who was in Amsterdam in 1942 with her husband and three children, wrote: ‘Dr Wander spontaneously offered his help to protect my family and myself from the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazis. Consequently he changed our Jewish ancestry to such an extent that our names could be placed on the “Calmeyer-list”, thereby seriously endangering himself. Through his intermediary an examination was made by a German professor concerning the “racial characteristics” of our family; afterwards the abovementioned professor declared that we possessed “no distinctive Jewish racial characteristics”.’18

  Calmeyer managed to continue with his deception to the end. By January 1944 he had investigated 4,787 ‘doubtful’ racial cases, of which he declared an astonishing 2,026 to be ‘only’ half-Jews and a further 837 to be quarter-Jews. All these were thereby saved from deportation. The historian of the fate of Dutch Jewry, Jacob Presser, writes: ‘He went to endless trouble to prove helpful to all petitioners. There is no doubt that hundreds of Jews owe their lives to him.’19

  Calmeyer was helped in this task not only by Dr Wander, but also by another German, Heinrich Miessen, who worked in his office. Wander eventually fell foul of the German authorities that had entrusted him with the task of helping with the ‘purification’ of the Dutch race, and was reca
lled to the army and sent to the Russian front. He deserted from his unit, returned to Holland and joined the Dutch underground. He was killed in January 1945, shortly before the Allied liberation of Holland, during a Gestapo ambush in Amsterdam. Calmeyer survived the war. In a letter to Jacob Presser in 1965, he wrote: ‘Every action—whatever we did to help, was too little, too little…I am to this day filled with despair.’20

  The story of Calmeyer and Wander is one that Mordecai Paldiel, head of the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, considers of particular power, subtitling the chapter on Calmeyer in one of his books: ‘How a German Official Saved 3,000 Dutch Jews Under the Noses of the SS’.21

  Another story that attracted the special attention of Dr Paldiel—who is familiar with the details of many thousands of cases—is that of Alfred Rossner, a German factory owner in the ghetto of Bedzin, in southwestern Poland. Through the years of German occupation and Nazi rule, Rossner did his utmost to save the Jews who worked under him, producing German army uniforms and boots. During the three principal SS raids into the Bedzin ghetto to seize Jews for deportation, Rossner personally intervened to try to save as many Jews as possible; sometimes by claiming they were part of the ‘essential’ workers of his factories; at other times by adding them to the roll-call of his workers.

  At the start of the second major ‘action’, in summer 1942, Rossner had himself driven, in his horse-drawn carriage, through the streets of the Jewish neighbourhood, shouting in Yiddish: ‘Jews don’t be stupid; don’t go when they call you!’ During another SS raid into the ghetto, Rossner stood alongside the marching Jews. ‘When he saw me pass,’ Yocheved Galili recalls, ‘he pointed me out to the SS man as one of his “essential” workers.’ Yocheved then seized her sister’s hand, she did the same to her cousin, and so on, until six women formed a chain. A heated debate then ensued between Rossner and the SS man, who insisted that only Yocheved be allowed to go. As she left the column, she dragged with her the other five women. During the melee of pushing and beatings, the six were able to sneak away. ‘To this day, I don’t understand how this all happened,’ Yocheved Galili said. ‘Rossner’s men covered our escape, and we fast found ourselves hidden in Rossner’s offices.’

  During a third and final ‘action’ in the Bedzin ghetto, in August 1943, Karola Baum hid with her family in a coal cellar. Somehow, luck was with her, and although her family were taken and deported, she was not caught. After sunset she tried to leave, but was inhibited by the sight of the streets filled with soldiers, and the pavements littered with the corpses of Jews. She was finally able, when the soldiers had gone, to sneak out of the ghetto, barefoot, and went to the non-Jewish side of the city. ‘I was left on the street. I then decided to sneak away and head to Rossner’s home. I looked terrible: dirty, with leg wounds, and frightened.’

  The Polish governess of Rossner’s children allowed Karola Baum in to the house. Hardly had she done so when Rossner stepped out of his room and said she was welcome to join the other Jews hiding in his factory. ‘In simple words, he said that I could wash up and eat, and asked his governess to help me.’ After a night’s stay in Rossner’s home, she was taken by him to the factory.

  During the same Nazi action, Cesia Rubinstein had been rounded up and was standing in line to be deported. Suddenly Rossner appeared, with a German assistant, and the two men began taking out young Jews, including Cesia, whom they quickly moved into the factory, where they were safe from harm.

  Also on Rossner’s orders, several trucks loaded with fabric were sent into the Bedzin ghetto. On the return journey to the factory, people were hidden under the layers of clothes, and smuggled into Rossner’s two factories. After the final liquidation of August 1943, there were only six hundred Jewish slave labourers left, out of an original ten thousand. In his efforts to find and protect Jews, Rossner was persistent and heroic. His fate was sealed; at the end of 1943 he was arrested by the SS, and hanged. By the time of his execution, there were only fifty Jews left under his protection.22

  IN THE EAST Galician town of Zolkiew, Valenti and Julia Beck and their daughter Aleksandra were typical of hundreds of thousands of Ethnic Germans whose forebears had settled in what later became Poland and Ukraine. When Germany occupied Zolkiew they registered as Ethnic Germans; this gave them a higher status than the local Poles and Ukrainians, and also made it seem impossible to the German occupation forces that they might have any sympathy for Jews. Indeed, Aleksandra often invited German soldiers to her home in order to help camouflage the family’s rescue activities.

  Sixteen Jews who escaped from the Zolkiew ghetto before the first deportation in November 1942 were hidden by Valenti in a bunker underneath the floor of his apartment. In April 1943, during the final liquidation of the ghetto, seven-year-old Zygmund Orlender and his four-year-old sister also sought refuge. Despite the opposition of those already hiding in the bunker, who protested against the increased overcrowding, Valenti and Julia Beck stood firm and took in the children. In spite of the heavy economic burden, the Becks supplied the needs of all their eighteen charges, of whom only a few could contribute to their upkeep. The fugitives remained in hiding until the area was liberated in July 1944.23

  In the former Polish province of Volhynia, a German engineer, Herman Friedrich (Fritz) Graebe, the manager of a construction company, did his utmost to protect the Jews in the Zdolbunow region of eastern Poland, from which his workers were drawn. In the words of his Polish secretary, recalling the summer and autumn of 1942: ‘During this period the extermination of the Volhynia Jews proceeded apace. The Jews of Zdolbunow county held out a little longer, namely until October, thanks only to Graebe. Arguing that he must carry out important construction work (the maintenance and proper operation of the Zdolbunow railroad junction which was of decisive importance for the operations of the German army at the north-Ukrainian front), he kept the Jews alive as long as he could.’24

  By deliberately exaggerating the importance of the work his factories were doing for the German army, Graebe built a reputation with the local SS commanders, which he was then able to use when intervening on behalf of the Jews. To ensure that his efforts were as effective as possible, he sought the advice of the chairman of the Zdolbunow Jewish Council. As a result of Graebe’s efforts and influence, the Jewish poll tax and levy on food were abolished, as were other fines imposed on the Jews. He also used his influence to persuade other companies to accord fair treatment to their Jewish workers.

  Graebe did not hesitate to take great risks to intervene on behalf of the Jews and protect them from the ‘actions’. On Saturday, 11 July 1942 he informed his German manager in Rovno that he had heard from his contacts in the German army that a liquidation ‘action’ against the Rovno Jews was to take place in two days’ time. Graebe had a hundred and fifty Jews—mostly from the nearby town of Zdolbunow—working for him in Rovno; they lived in several houses in the Rovno ghetto. Immediately he told them that they would have a day off on the Sunday and return on Monday to Zdolbunow.

  On the morning of the Monday, Graebe learned from the second most senior Nazi official in Rovno that the ghetto would be sealed at ten o’clock that night, and the ‘action’ begun. He at once demanded from the official, and obtained, a document that read: ‘The Jewish labour force employed by your company is not included in the “Action”. They must transfer to a new place of work until Wednesday, 15 July 1942, at the latest.’

  With this document, Graebe hurried to Rovno. There, brandishing a pistol, he guarded his Jewish workers against the Ukrainian policemen who were even then assembling ghetto residents before marching them to the railway station. Graebe witnessed the ‘action’ and saw the resistance put up by the Jews. Later that night the SS commander told him to remove his Jews until morning. Having obtained an SS soldier as an escort, Graebe did not wait for the trucks to come to take them away, but marched them out of the city himself on foot, leading the column, pistol in hand, to deter Ukrainian policemen. All 150 Jewish workers rea
ched Zdolbunow unharmed.

  The historian of the wartime fate of Volhynian Jewry, Shmuel Spector, has recorded that Graebe ‘went to great lengths to fight against the “Final Solution”’. It appears that it was he who advised the chairmen of the Ostrog, Zdolbunow and Mizocz Jewish Councils ‘to get organized and bribe the Germans. He succeeded in delaying the liquidation of the Jews in these three localities and they were the last to be liquidated (in mid-October 1942).’ By that time, as Graebe’s Polish secretary expressed it, ‘he had run out of possibilities to act’.

  After the liquidations in Volhynia, in which a quarter of a million Jews were murdered, Graebe continued to employ twenty-five Jews, whom he had supplied with ‘Aryan’ papers. When it became clear that if they stayed in Volhynia any longer their lives would be in danger, Graebe set up a branch of his company in the southern Ukrainian city of Poltava, and sent them there. He maintained this branch at his own expense, and often visited the Jews there, to give them money and furnish them with documents.

  After the war, at the Nuremberg Trials, Graebe was one of the most powerful witnesses to German atrocities.25 The fact that he gave testimony, writes Shmuel Spector, ‘created widespread animosity against him in Germany, and with the help of Jewish organizations he emigrated to the United States, settling in California.’26 Echoing rescuers everywhere, Fritz Graebe disclaimed any special virtue, telling his biographer: ‘I did what anyone could have done, should have done.’27