The Other Schindlers

by Agnes Grunwald-Spier

  Surprisingly, this did a lot of good in forcing the facts on the public abroad, so that overnight opportunities for children and even adults were given for emigration. Some months earlier the Confessional Church, which had been growing increasingly conscious of their position, decided to take action, and appointed Pfarrer (now Probst) Grueber to organise the care of non-Aryan Christians throughout Germany. Probst Grueber undertook this difficult and dangerous task with the greatest enthusiasm, devoting all his dynamic energies to it with loyal and ready support from other pastors and sympathetic co-operation of the German Quakers.117

  They worked extremely closely with the Quakers and, according to Brenda Bailey, Pastor Grüber’s ‘principal partner in Britain was Bertha Bracey’.118 Hermann Maas was one of his collaborators across Germany. In 1938 he warned a gathering of Confessional Church clergy that ‘Christianity in Germany had become quite as much an alien as were the Jews’.

  On 19 December 1940 Pastor Grüber was arrested and confined at Sachsenhausen concentration camp for two and a half years. He was fortunate – his deputy, Pastor Sylten, was taken to Dachau in February 1941 where he died in 1942, and seven other members of Grüber’s staff also died.119 Heinrich Grüber survived the war to be a witness at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961.120 Maas too was not forgotten. He was stopped from doing his parish work during the war and could not even visit schools, hospitals or prisons.

  In 1944 the Nazis shipped the 67-year-old clergyman, his wife and younger daughter to a labour camp in occupied France. He was liberated by the Americans in 1945 and maintained his devotion to Jewish matters by attending the synagogue in Heidelberg on the High Holidays and even fasting on the Day of Atonement.121 Both Hermann Maas and Pastor Grüber became actively involved in the early years of the creation of the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) and attended the first international conference in Oxford in 1946, whose report was called ‘Freedom, Justice and Responsibility’. There were 150 participants from all five continents and it is recorded: ‘Among them were two Christian pastors from Germany, Probst. Grüber from Berlin and Hermann Maas from Heidelberg. Writing of their presence many years later one of the Jewish participants described it as “profoundly impressive – one might say traumatic”.’122

  The CCJ had grown out of the British Council of Christians and Jews, which in turn had been born out of co-operation between Christians and Jews in Britain to help the victims of Nazi persecution.123 It was altogether appropriate that these two courageous men should have been part of this innovative group, with their old friend Rabbi Leo Baeck now settled in London. In 1947 Maas wrote to Martha, expressing his delight in the success of her and Paul’s emigration to England. He ended the letter:

  What a pity I was not able to drive with you through London on the roof of the buses or wander along the Thames with you. How much there would have been to tell each other. All your guidances under the word: ‘People intended to make it bad, but God made it good.’ And He has sent every one of you, you too dear child, good people. Thus you have now found your dear mother in your motherly woman and friend. Give her the profound thanks from a German who never stopped for a second to hate the Hitler madness.124

  Hermann Maas was the first German invited to visit the new State of Israel in 1949, and in 1953 a small grove of trees was planted at Mount Gilboa in his honour which particularly pleased him.125 Hermann died in September 1970.

  Martha herself was present with her brother Paul and her husband Ron Mower when the Hermann Maas Foundation was launched in Heidelberg in 1988 by four private individuals. She wished to express her feelings about him by saying, ‘I have travelled to Heidelberg to honour this man who was our friend when we so badly needed a friend.’126

  The foundation’s constitution specifies its aim ‘to foster Christian-Jewish co-operation on a broad international base’. One method was to grant a German theology student the opportunity to study at a university in Israel. Dr Meister, one of the founders, described Maas as ‘an admirable person with great charisma’.127

  It was subsequently decided that with the support of the Hermann Maas Foundation, the Hermann Maas Medal would be awarded every four years in Gengenbach, Maas’ birthplace. The recipients were to be individuals who had distinguished themselves in the promotion of understanding between Christians and Germans.

  In 1995, in Heidelberg’s twin city Rehovot in Israel, a street was named after Hermann Maas.

  Sadly, Ron Mower, my main informant, died in 2004, and Martha’s brother Paul, whose unpublished memoir proved invaluable, died in September 2009. However, I have had contact with his son Paul, who was pleased to hear that their story is being told.

  Hermann was always modest about himself, and would no doubt be shocked by the level of attention and the honours he has received posthumously. When Alfred Werner asked him for additional biographical information in 1948, he sent it with a note which roughly translates as ‘Am I really worthy of so much effort?’

  Valérie Rácz (1911–97), known as Vali, was a Catholic woman whose career as a singer had always been intertwined with Jews. She was also an actress and made twenty films between 1936 and 1956 and simply oozed glamour. She was known as the ‘Hungarian Marlene Dietrich’. Her father, Ferenc Rácz, was headmaster of a village school but had a peasant background, and her mother, Gizella Sohonyay, was a member of the old Hungarian gentry. They had moved to Gölle, a farming village in south-west Hungary, after their marriage in 1910.

  Ferenc had run away from his family when he was 14. He was the youngest of twelve children and the only one who did not want a peasant’s life. He was taken in by a parish priest in another village who began to educate him, and eventually his parents relented and agreed to pay the priest to look after him and continue his education. When they moved to Gölle he became both teacher and cantor. ‘He was very religious, and this may have been at least partly due to the fact that it was the Church, in the form of his erstwhile priest-mentor, which had provided him with an escape route from the peasant life, and the alternative he so desperately sought.’128

  Vali’s career as a singer was very influenced by Jews. As a young woman she was a skilled pianist but it was her singing voice which captivated people. Soon after her graduation she was asked to entertain a guest in her parents’ home. He was Géza Wéhner, who was a professor at the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, and also chief organist at Budapest’s vast Dohány Street synagogue. She so impressed him that he invited her to audition at the Budapest Music Academy, and in September 1932 she left her home village to embark on her remarkable career. Géza Wéhner was the first of many influential Jewish figures who played a decisive role in shaping Vali’s career. Another Jew who had a strong influence was Paul Ábrahám, a successful composer of operettas and film scores. It was through him that she got her first big break – singing at the famous Budapest haunt of the jet set: the Negrescó café. This led to a two-year stint at the famous Budapest revue theatre – the Terézkörúti. Here she was one of the few non-Jewish performers and worked with some of the most talented artists of the day. This period must have been formative in her attitude towards Jews.129

  The famous Jewish couturier Sándor Gergely offered to design a dress for her early in her career, on condition that if she liked it she would have all her stage dresses made at his salon. She accepted and the resulting dress was a sensation because it was so unlike other singers’ normal outfits. Gergely took her under his wing and ‘dressed her as if she were one of his models, in creations as stunning and flattering as anything to be found in Paris’. These dresses were the source of reminiscences for decades.130

  Gergely was more perceptive than most of his co-religionists over the introduction, in 1941, of the Third Jewish Law:

  he didn’t share the naive optimism of most other Hungarian Jews, who convinced themselves that things were bearable, that they wouldn’t get worse, and that if they only sat tight, they could weather the storm of Nazism. Gergely felt ins
tinctively that things could, and would get worse. Since 1940 there had been a series of laws and decrees concerning the Jewish labour service, which was for the majority of the men conscripted into it, tantamount to a death sentence. In late 1942 he received his labour service call-up papers. He closed down his salon and gave Vali a parting gift of a black velvet dress he had just finished. Soon afterwards he poisoned himself.131

  His death was not only a terrible personal blow to Vali, but also another example of how desperate things were for Budapest’s Jews, even though many still failed to realise it. They had been lulled into a false sense of security by the refusal of the new Prime Minister, Miklós Kállay, to implement many of the Nazis’ demands and his refusal to make the Jews wear the yellow star. Inevitably, this situation could not last and it was discovered that Kállay was trying to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies at the same time as announcing in a speech in May 1943: ‘Hungary will never deviate from those precepts of humanity which, in the course of its history, it has always maintained in racial and religious questions.’ It was then only a matter of time before the Nazis determined to control ‘this Jewish-influenced State’, and this happened in March 1944.132

  Vali’s greatest success was ironically during the war, when she was a pin-up for the Hungarian troops fighting on the Eastern Front. Additionally, she became resident singer at the Hangli Kiosk. This was a famous Budapest nightspot overlooking the Danube and was owned by the Rónay brothers – father and uncle of the food critic Egon Rónay.133

  In May 1944 Vali was phoned by an old friend, Bandi Schreiber, in whose hotel she had found great success as a chanteuse in the summers of 1940 and 1941. Bandi was Jewish but had a Christian wife. He described to her the panic in the city of Budapest as news of mass deportations of Jews from rural areas reached the city. Desperate attempts were being made to get forged identity papers:

  But public opinion had been poisoned by the years of rabid and systematic propaganda by the extreme-Right minority in Hungary. And now Jews were being shunned by their Gentile friends and neighbours, and those living with false Christian papers were being denounced. Humane Gentiles trying to help them were branded as traitors.134

  Bandi wanted Vali to hide his cousin and his wife who had been denounced and were desperate for somewhere to hide. Vali knew of the risks and said she would have to think about it for a day or so. She consulted her former lover and now close confidant and friend, Paul Barabás, a writer of film scripts and an ardent anti-Nazi. It was he who devised a plan of hiding the Jews in the back half of an enormous wardrobe, by building a false partition in the middle and creating a secret compartment, for when there was a Nazi raid. The rest of the time they were hidden in the basement.

  The Mandels were a quiet middle-aged couple. As soon as they arrived, Vali discussed certain essential precautions with them – they could go outside to the garden for fresh air only after dark; they must stay away from the front windows; and in the event of friends or visitors coming to the house, they were to remain silently in the basement until the visitors were gone. No one must discover their presence.

  The Mandels were Orthodox, and their unswerving faith saved them from despondency. Despite their vast religious and cultural differences, Vali and the Mandels understood each other very well. She made things as comfortable as possible for them in one of the basement rooms, where, each Friday evening, they lit candles and celebrated Sabbath.135 They were soon joined by a friend of Vali’s, Margit Herzog, and her 14-year-old daughter Marietta. On one occasion poor Marietta had to hide behind a huge bookcase for hours whilst the Gestapo searched the house (see plate 12). The Herzogs were a large and extremely wealthy family, and Margit’s husband Dezsõ had already suffered dreadfully during eighteen months of forced labour on the Eastern Front. The family home in Budapest was on Andrássy Avenue, the grandest address in the city, and they owned farms and vineyards which produced some of Hungary’s most famous wine. Margit’s eldest brother Sándor had proposed to Vali, but although she was very fond of him, she declined his offer.136

  The Herzogs were among the first people Vali thought of when the Germans occupied the country. No one in the family had thought of taking steps to forestall the dangers of a Nazi takeover. Like many other Jews, wealthy and otherwise, they wanted to believe that, despite the passing political traumas, the traditionally tolerant aristocratic leadership of Hungary would in the end protect them. Also, they were strongly bound to their land and their fortune. They simply couldn’t abandon it. It was to be a fatal mistake.137

  Margit’s brother Imre was a decorated hero of the First World War. He had lost an arm on the Russian front in 1915 but his valiant reputation allowed him to go unmolested around Budapest, even in the post-occupation regime. He was known as ‘One-armed Imre’, but his freedom was short-lived and, like the holders of the Iron Cross in Germany, his pride in his immunity as a hero was not to provide protection for long. One of the first acts of the Szálasi government, which came to power on 15 October 1944, was to revoke all exemptions for Jews, even war heroes, and ‘One-armed Imre’ had to go into hiding.138

  Vali’s daughter, Monica Porter, has written of rescuers such as her mother:

  They simply did what they felt they had to do and as far as they were concerned, it wasn’t about ‘heroism’ at all … As she well knew, the penalty for harbouring a Jew was summary execution. But how could she not help when, out on the streets, the city’s Jews were being rounded up, deported, tortured or shot?139

  Nevertheless, Vali’s motivation was complex. She was a sophisticated woman who had been involved in show business all her adult life. In Budapest that theatrical world was full of Jews and therefore she had known and worked with Jews for just as long, and had loved some of them. When they were threatened she could do nothing but help them. She had been brought up to be a Catholic and her father was extremely devout. Her parents had sent her to a convent for her schooling from the age of 10. There she learnt three skills: ‘an iron discipline, a dedication of purpose and self-restraint – which not only helped to secure her later success as a singer and actress, but helped to save her life’.140 Her daughter also credits her professional and romantic involvement with Paul Barabás, her lover since 1938, as a major influence. Barabás was working for the Resistance and devised the wardrobe hiding place for his precious ‘Valikó’. He was able to facilitate the arrangements and without him she might not have been so comparatively successful in hiding her Jewish ‘guests’.141 The house that Vali was living in when she hid the Jews – No 47d Budakeszi Avenue – eventually became the embassy of the government of Columbia.142

  These courageous activities brought her anxieties and dangers. She came under suspicion and was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned and interrogated for two weeks, but she was released without giving anything away. After the Russians had liberated Budapest, a group of Jewish partisans accused her of collaboration and sentenced her to death. It is said that a Red Army colonel, with whom she had been having an affair, intervened and saved her, hours before she was due to be shot.143

  All the people she hid survived the war and some emigrated to Israel. Vali married a writer, Peter Halász, in 1946. A son, Valér, was born in 1950 and a daughter, Mónika, in 1952. When the 1956 Hungarian revolution failed, the family of four escaped to the USA. They came to London in 1970 and in 1975 Vali and her husband moved to Munich, where she died in February 1997.

  Vali was recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations in 1991. When Monica was in Jerusalem with her mother, they met up with some of the residents of the life-saving wardrobe and generations of a family who would not have existed but for Vali’s courage.144 She said of her wartime activities: ‘I just did what I had to do’. There is now a website dedicated to her: www.valiracz.com.145 Her daughter, Monica Porter, a freelance journalist, now lives in London, and her partner is Nick Winton, son of Nicholas Winton, who rescued 669 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia in 1939.

  Soeur S
t Cybard (1885–1968). Josie Martin was born as Josephine Levy in Alsace-Lorraine in 1938, where her family had lived for generations. Following the fall of France, the little family fled to a village in Vichy France where they were accepted and Josie went to nursery school. However, by 1944 there were Nazi sweeps taking place. That was bad enough, but the greater danger was from the French police: the real super Gestapo who were forever trying to show the German Nazis how loyal they were by betraying Frenchmen who were helping Jews.146

  They fled to a nearby farm to hide and a farmer and his wife, who were family friends, offered to adopt 5-year-old Josie, but her parents could not bring themselves to do it. Then they heard that a nun, Soeur St Cybard, was running a girls’ school about 50km away. They made contact with her and she agreed to take Josie. It was a day school and she was to be the only boarder. Josie stayed for seven months, under the cover name of Josie L’Or, and her parents’ parting words to her were never to reveal her true name. She was in the convent until the liberation of Paris in August 1944, when she was reunited with her parents who had been hiding elsewhere in the countryside.147

  Ten years ago Josie recalled:

  The nun was a no-nonsense person and a woman of great importance in the small village. She was very political and very involved in helping the villagers. For example, she was the one who would write to the front and ask about missing sons. In some ways she was almost like a social worker. I developed tremendous admiration for this woman, who was strong, important, and very different from the typical French farm woman of the region. Even I felt a sense of importance in being ‘her’ child.148