March 30, 2022

"She recalled that it was snowing gently when the Germans occupied her town in March 1939. An officer commandeered the family’s house."

"Residents were lining the streets silently, she said, and then, 'as if with one voice, they started singing our national anthem that started with the words "Where is my home?" I didn’t realize that our home was no longer ours, and I didn’t realize that this was the end of our happiness and the beginning of the occupation.' Vera’s mother queued up for four days to apply for the Kindertransport; then, one evening, she announced to her husband at dinner that the girls had secured seats and would be going to England. 'There was a deathly silence. Father looked shocked and terribly surprised,' Mrs. Gissing wrote in her memoir. 'All at once his dear face seemed haggard and old. He covered it with his hands, whilst we all waited in silence. Then he lifted his head, smiled at us with tears in his eyes, sighed and said, "All right, let them go."'"

From "Vera Gissing, Who Was Rescued by ‘Britain’s Schindler,’ Dies at 93/She was not quite 11 when train convoys organized by a London stockbroker carried her and hundreds of other Jewish children from Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II" (NYT).

25 comments:

Ann Althouse said...

The father was "fatally shot while on a death march from the Terezin concentration camp in December 1944," and the mother "died from typhoid two days after she was liberated from another camp, Bergen-Belsen."

Ann Althouse said...

"As the last child left waiting in London for a guardian, Vera recalled, she was greeted by Mummy Rainford. 'And as she saw me, she started laughing and smiling and crying at the same time and she ran toward me, flung her arms around me, and she spoke some words I didn’t understand then, but they were "You shall be loved." And loved I was.'"

Readering said...

First Nazi invasion of territory without claim to being German. 6 years 1 month from Hitler being made chancellor. Another 6 years 1 month to his suicide. 988 years short of 1000 year reich.

hawkeyedjb said...

I am reading Winston Churchill's "The Gathering Storm." All was foreseen, all was foretold.

Joe Smith said...

There are real heroes in the world...

Mike Sylwester said...

PBS sometimes broadcasts a documentary, called The Windermere Children, about the resettlement and subsequent lives of those children.

madAsHell said...

I can't imagine casting my kids to the wind because there is no future in front of us.

Howard said...

Just like Putin rescuing the Ukraine from Nazis. Tune into Tucker Carlson tonight and be amazed.

Patrick said...

I feel so blessed to have the life I do, and to have been able to provide something similar for my children.

David Begley said...

1. At least Father didn’t have to choose.

2. Reports that Russia kidnapped some children and took them to Russia. The root cause of this disaster being Mark Zuckerberg and others stealing the election for Biden. Do you think Zuckerberg ever thinks about that reality? Can we try HIM as a war criminal? He allowed it to happen. The proximate cause. He’s the Plasgraff of this war.

YoungHegelian said...

My great-aunt & great-grandmother in Nice, France had a German officer quartered with them after the German's occupied Vichy France after D-Day.

They actually liked him, considering the circumstances. He spoke French fluently. He told them that he didn't want to fight the French, that he adored France & the French (a not uncommon feeling among Germans, considering, Rilke mentions the German saying for someone who had struck it big, "He lives like a god in France"). But, he said, he was a soldier & soldiers do as they are told.

If this officer survived the war was unknown, as they had no contact with him after the German forces had to retreat after the Allied invasion at Toulon.

Tom T. said...

Some of the background of the rescue effort is here.

Dave Begley said...

When the GOP takes back the House in 2022, there needs to be a Select Committee on the 2020 Presidential election.

First witness will be Mark Zuckerberg.

Rep. Begley from Nebraska, "Mr. Zuckerberg, after Russia invaded Ukraine because you had installed the weak, stupid, corrupt and senile Joe Biden as President, did you feel good about what you had done? Or did you regret it? Did you feel guilty? Do you have nightmares about the dead in Ukraine due to your actions in 2019 being the proximate cause of their deaths?

And was it all worth it? Or did you just have more money?"

I know the above is a compound question, but a Congressional hearing isn't a trial.

Narayanan said...

and Nicholas Winton, the young London stockbroker who, she learned only belatedly, had anonymously organized convoys, [1939]
=============
so why is HL writer comparing Winton to Schindler [1941] at all / rather than other way round?

Power of Hollywood? is it even comparable?

RoseAnne said...

One of my favorite things about the TV show "The Repair Shop" is the stories told by people bringing in items. One lady who looked to be in her 70's said she had been sent to the country to avoid the bombing and lived with a family she initially didn't know for several years. She brought in a well-loved doll which the family had given her. She was 4 when she was evacuated.

Jefferson's Revenge said...

Dave Begley. I hope what you ask for comes true. The last 8-10 years of Dem/Tech/Deep state corruption is slowly becoming visible to the public. The bad guys feel invulnerable. Candidly, I think it started with the IRS and Lois Lerner. No one going to jail and no meaningful investigations of a weaponized IRS while the R’s had Congress emboldened very bad behavior. If there are no real investigations and no jail time after the last few years, we have no government anymore. If the R’s win back Congress in 2022 and go through the motions again we are screwed. This is an existential issue and not political theater.

Richard Aubrey said...

Or pitching your infant over the barbed wire figuring getting out of Kabul in the hands of American strangers is better than trying to raise her amongst a bunch of Taliban. Wonder how that worked out.

Richard Dolan said...

There is a similar moment at the beginning of Michael Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay -- in the novel it played out a bit differently and the exit of Kavalier took a bit longer, but ended with a safe exit by the child and the parents dying in the Holocaust.

Narayanan said...

@ pal Begley; = thanks for the Palsgraf - good edumacation.

The defendant appealed to the US Supreme Court - says lawteacher? misstatement? level of education?

per Wikipedia Cardozo wrote for a 4–3 majority of the Court of Appeals of New York reversed

Dave Begley said...

Narayanan:

I didn't exactly get the spelling and Palsgraf reference right, but you got my drift. Zuckerberg stole the election because he wanted to get rid of Trump for a number of reasons; the primary reason was probably an anti-trust case against Facebook and some type of Free Speech legislation of FB.

The unintended consequences (but quite predictable) consequences were the pullout from Afghanistan and Russia invading Ukraine.

And for what? More money? He's got enough already and Biden wants more of it.

BUMBLE BEE said...

My wife encountered a Physical Medicine Specialist more than 15 years ago. A Korean war orphan, he was adopted and brought to America. Brilliant man, master of many disciplines, He initially used a #2 needle to do a marcaine flood of her occipital region of her brain to prevent Migraine. He was the first in the state to use Botox for pain block, which is effective for three months migraine free living. Previous to meeting him, she was 4 for 7 days in pain due to a car accident. Changed her life. Tell migraine sufferers about Botox blocks if you care about them. We thank God for his existence.

Narr said...

Vichy was occupied after Torch in 1942, not D-Day in 1944, but other than that I find the story quite believable. That German officer sounds a bit like Ernst Juenger.

IIRC, Anne Frank's father had been an officer of the Kaiser in WW I, and became friends with a French family where he served.

(I suspect Schindler gets first billing because he's much better known.)

Gahrie said...

Vichy was occupied after Torch in 1942, not D-Day in 1944,

The first day of the Torch invasion was also called D-Day. That's what the term meant, the first day of a major operation; until it took on a deeper connection with the Normandy invasion. There's an H-hour and an M-minute too in a lot of them.

Gahrie said...

Legacies like this are all that keep me from despair.

Narr said...

You are correct in terminology Gahrie, but D-Day has come to represent 6 June 1944 in most minds.

Apologies to YoungHegelian if that's what he meant.

What legacies do you refer to, BTW? (1022PM)