... And the Policeman Smiled Read Online Free PDF Page B

days. Well – I thought a man with thoseconvictions would refuse to put out swastika flags. But on that Saturday morning we found ourselves the only flat on the block that was totally denuded of flags.
    In charge of the Jewish emigration office in Vienna was a thirty-two-year-old SS
Obersturmbannführer
. Described as ‘a painstaking bureaucrat’, Adolf Eichmann was soon to prove his value to the Reich as the unrivalled expert in handling what were known as ‘technical and organisational problems’ connected with the treatment of Jews. His declared aim was to make Austria
judenrein
, ‘free of Jews’.
    His victims were only too happy to comply. Thousands besieged the
Kultusgemeinde
, the central Jewish organisation, begging for visas. An emigration bureau set up by a Dutch philanthropist collected 20,000 names in a matter of days. Outside the United States embassy, the queue stretched for a quarter of a mile, day and night. In London, the Jewish Refugees Committee received up to 1000 calls a day.
    But the supply of visas was a long way short of demand. Embassy officials of all nationalities had to reconcile orders from their governments to examine every application for an excuse to reject with the threat of annihilation hanging over the entire community.
    Demand for places on the Palestinian immigration quota intensified, the very opposite of what the British intended. Meanwhile, German shipping companies discovered a profitable sideline in charging high prices for berths in clapped-out steamers which sailed the Mediterranean, crowded with Jewish families hoping to be smuggled ashore in Palestine or to be accepted by the authorities because there was nowhere else for them to go.
    Those who still had some faith in Europe took any chance of refuge, even if it meant splitting up families to allow for children to escape ahead of their elders. In Britain there were several groups of well-wishers ready to care for young people, though the numbers sponsored by charitable enterprise were pitifully small.
    Concerned for Jewish and non-Aryan Christian children alike, the Children’s Inter-Aid Committee brought in some 150 children up to the beginning of 1938 and another 300 by the end of the year. Founded in 1936 by two unsung heroines – Mrs Skelton and Mrs Francis Bendit – of whom little is known except theirsympathy for young people in need, the Inter-Aid Committee was supported by the CBF and the Save the Children Fund. A link across to the CBF was provided by Sir Wyndham Deedes, who was chairman of the Committee. Another valuable link was with
B’nai B’rith
, a Jewish fraternal society which maintained several hostels in the London area.
    From Inter-Aid it was but a short step to The Society of Friends (their headquarters were in a neighbouring street). The Quakers numbered less than 23,000 in Britain and only 160,000 world wide, yet, of all the non-Jewish bodies who might have been expected to take an active interest in the refugee problem, they were alone in having a network of contacts in the European capitals.
    Their German Emergency Committee was active from 1933. In its first two years, 600 families and individuals were helped to escape. Among them were numerous political dissidents – socialists, communists and pacifists – who were even worse off than the Jews, since they had few friends at home and even fewer abroad.
    As early as 1934, Bertha Bracey and two other members of the German Emergency Committee gathered support for a school at Stoatley Rough near Haslemere in Surrey, primarily for German children. But the work by Quakers on behalf of young people only really took off after the
Anschluss
. By November 1938, the Vienna centre had arranged for over 300 children to go to other countries.
    Stoatley Rough was not unique. Another was at Bunce Court, a manor house in Kent. The head teacher of Bunce Court was a remarkable woman called Anna Essinger. In 1925 she