Reed - The children of La Hille: eluding Nazi capture during World War II

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Copyright 2015 by Syracuse University Press

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First Edition 2015

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ISBN: 978-0-8156-3422-5 (cloth) 978-0-8156-1058-8 (paperback) 978-0-8156-5338-7 (e-book)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Reed, Walter W., 1924 author.

The children of La Hille : eluding Nazi capture during World War II / Walter W. Reed.

pages cm (Modern Jewish history)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8156-3422-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8156-1058-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8156-5338-7 (e-book) 1. JewsFranceMontgut-PlantaurelHistory20th century. 2. Hille (Montgut-Plantaurel, France) 3. Jewish children in the HolocaustFranceMontgut-PlantaurelBiography. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)FranceMontgut-PlantaurelBiography. 5. World War, 19391945JewsRescueFrance. 6. Montgut-Plantaurel (France)Ethnic relations. I. Title.

DS135.F85M6547 2015

940.53'18350830944735dc23

2015031724

Manufactured in the United States of America

To my parents, Rika and Siegfried, who gave me life twiceat birth and when they sent me away.

Table of Contents

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

T his is a story of heroes of the Holocaust. The heroes are the parents of young Jewish children. The heroes are the women of a Belgian rescue committee. The heroes are young Swiss people who risked hardship in Vichy France over security at home to save refugee childrens lives. They are ordinary French country folk who befriended and hid Jewish children. Above all, the heroes are the children themselves. They endured hardships and persecution and escaped across hostile and closely guarded borders. Some even chose to become Resistance fighters and Allied soldiers. And they include a humanitarian Swiss pastor who started to research and write this book until premature death intervened in 2003.

I was one of the children, but I never intended to write a book. In fact, for fifty years I had no contact with any of my wartime companions. I was able to emigrate from Vichy France to the United States in 1941, served in the US Army in France and Germany until 1946, and then put the whole history of Nazi persecution behind me. In 1943 I became a US citizen, changed my name from Werner Rindsberg to Walter Reed and never looked back.

During a return to southern France in 1997 to show my family the sites of my wartime childrens refugee colony, we discovered for the first time what happened to my La Hille companions after I left them in August 1941. From several excellent memoirs published in the 1990s and through personal contact with rediscovered La Hille companions all over the world I learned the astounding details of their persecution and of their desperate attempts to escape.

When Swiss theologian and historian Dr. Theo Tschuy decided to write a carefully documented history of the Children of La Hille in early 2002, I enthusiastically offered to support and assist him, for I felt that the complete story of our colony would add meaningfully to the understanding of Nazi persecution of Jewish children.

My new friend, Theo Tschuy, decided from the beginning to focus this history on the topic of children as victims of war and to base his book entirely on thoroughly researched documentation. Regrettably, incurable cancer terminated Theo Tschuys life in late 2003 before he could complete the research of our history. Gradually the obligation to carry on his intentions and his work became my mission and my objective. It is now my book as well as his. Above all it is the book of all the Children of La Hille.

Prologue

I n my desperate situation I appeal in the twelfth hour for help from your organization. In mid-January I will be forced to leave the German Reich. As I do not know where this questionable fate will take me, I beg you fervently for the kindness to accept my only, lovely, and dearly loved daughter, so that I might go off on the road into the unknown with lighter heart and tranquility.

No one can imagine the pain of becoming separated from ones loved ones for an unforeseeable time unless they are, as I am, directly affected. Please accept heartfelt and sincere thanks from a heart-broken father. So wrote Leopold Tauber of Vienna, Austria to the Belgian Rescue Committee for Jewish Refugee Children (CAEJR) about his 12-year-old daughter Lilly on December 23, 1938.

And on March 8, 1939, Mrs. Ruth Strauss of Erfurt, Germany, wrote you are the last straw to which I cling [to save my 11-year-old son].... I would gladly undergo any sacrifice to know [that he is] in good hands. If you cannot help me, I dont know where to turn in my desperation.

What could move devoted parents to send their young children to foreign countries and entrust them to strangers, with the strong possibility that they might never see them again? And how do children react and get along when they are separated from their family at such a tender age?

As the persecution of Jewish citizens by hate-crazed Nazis intensified in the late 1930s, frightened parents were forced to consider sending their children away in order to save their lives. After the horrifying attacks and atrocities against German and Austrian Jews during the infamous Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) in November 1938, Leopold Tauber and Ruth Strauss were joined by thousands of Jewish families who tried to find refuge for their children in Western European countries.

About 10,000 Jewish children were admitted to England after Kristallnacht through the so-called Kindertransports, and many hundreds more were able to escape to Holland, France, and Luxembourg. Still virtually unknown today are the efforts by the Belgian Jewish rescue committee members who procured their governments permission for the temporary stay of nearly 1,000 young refugee children from Germany and Austria.

More than one million Jewish children were brutally murdered by the Germans and their satellite helpers during the Holocaust. Thousands of others were displaced, separated from their families, and hunted by their German and cooperating oppressors in other countries until the final days of World War II.