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A GLIMPSE OF HISTORY
Photo Courtesy of HBO
German soldiers marching
through the streets of Vienna
on March 15, 1938, following
the Anschluss.
Gilbert Kraus
RESCUE
Despite Great Odds
The USS President Harding.
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BY EVELY NE SINGER
The world watched in silence as Adolf Hitler, from the time of his election as chancellor of Germany in
1933, implemented all of his racist policies, swallowed up the territories of other countries in
contravention of international law, consigned political opponents to concentration camps, and institutied
laws of racial and religious purity that turned the human-rights clock back centuries. On the night of
November 9, 1938, a date commemorated around the world last week, even those who were
insensitive to what was happening were stunned by the Kristallnacht pogrom, and were unable to
ignore the obvious purpose of Hitler’s plans.
Kristallnacht was not about laws or even about openly professed hatred; it was about shockingly
violent action. In one fell swoop, a thousand years of Jewish religious history were burned to the
ground, and evil words exploded into evil deeds. And yet these events were met by tepid statements
on the part of lawmakers, religious leaders, and international organizations. There was no
worldwide plan to save refugees, and there was no mass convoy to help Jews escape the cauldron of
devastation.
The silence was deafening. In the face of this silence, however, a few heroic men and women acted
courageously, swimming against the current. What follows is the story of one such couple, Gilbert and
Eleanor Kraus, who rescued fifty children from the inferno. The 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht is an
appropriate time to remember them.
Photo courtesy Paul Beller
The children arrive
in New York.
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Photo credit: PerlePress Productions
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T
he Krauses’ accomplishment
is recognized as one of the
largest single successful
efforts on the part of
individuals in America,
backed by an independent organization
and without government funding, to
rescue children during that terrible period.
Sadly, only a tiny percent of those Jews
targeted for destruction were actually
saved. There was no massive, concerted
movement by American Jews to save their
brothers and sisters in Germany and
Austria. The Krauses’ selflessness stands
out as a brightly burning beacon in a time
of darkness. Their noble efforts came at a
time of prevailing inaction and opposition
all over the United States. One wonders
whether America’s doors might have
opened wider if the response of its Jews
had been stronger.
The Krauses sought no recognition for
their efforts. They returned to their regular
lives after completing their mission. No
one in their family had any idea of what
they had done. However, Eleanor Kraus
had written detailed notes of the entire
rescue mission, which she kept in a
drawer. The manuscript was discovered
only after her death in 1989.
(Right) The passport of a child saved by
the Krauses. Note the middle name
“Israel,” which was added by law to the
name of every Jewish male.
(Above) Gilbert Kraus
Jews are
forced to
scrub the
streets on
their hands
and knees.
A Moving Documentary
Eleanor Kraus’s manuscript, which tells
the incredible story of a dangerous journey
to Austria and Germany, has become the
basis of an exceptional documentary film,
“50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr.
and Mrs. Kraus.” That documentary,
produced in cooperation with the U.S.
Holocaust Museum, shows never-beforeseen footage of goose-stepping Nazis
marching into Vienna and being greeted
by cheering crowds and flag-waving
children, as well as scenes of Jewish shops
marked with the word “Jude” and photos
of Jews being forced to scrub the streets on
their hands and knees.
The film contains interviews with seven
of the rescued children, now elderly adults
living in Israel and across the U.S., all of
whom lost contact with the Krauses after
reaching America. They recall the beauty
of Vienna and their idyllic early
childhoods — and their sudden shock at
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H a m o d i a N o v e m b e r 1 3 , 2 01 3
discovering how deeply the Austrians
supported Hitler. Mainly they recall with
tears their own despair at being separated
from their families.
The Children Speak
“It was as though angels of G-d had
stepped in to save us,”
“To this day, I can hardly believe that I
am alive.”
“They looked so beautiful and elegant,
I almost didn’t believe they were real.”
These were comments by some of the
fifty rescued Jews during telephone and
other interviews.
But the rescued children also have
other memories. Henny Wenkart spoke
about the deep feeling of shame that
overcame her at the thought that she was
“saving my own skin” and leaving behind
her parents and little sister.
She lamented the fact that the world
stood by after Kristallnacht and that most
Jews were not as fortunate as she was. “At
the beginning you could get out,
everybody could get out. Nobody would let
us in. Everyone could have been saved …
everyone,” she said.
Eleanor Kraus herself wrote, “To take a
child from its mother seems to be one of
the lowest things a human being can do,
but it was as if we had drawn up in a
lifeboat.”
Early Warning Signals
For more than a year before World
War II broke out, there were many strong
warning signs of the impending
nightmare. “Anti-Semitic savagery not
seen since the Middle Ages was
Photo credit: PerlePress Productions
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U.S. Isolationism in the 1930s
There are those who justify the isolationist stance of the United States in those years.
With painful memories of World War I still strong, there was great reluctance in
America to become involved again in the troubles of Europe. The Great Depression was
not yet over. Mindful of the situation, many, including some Jewish organizations,
warned that mass Jewish immigration to the U.S. from Germany and German-held
territories was to be avoided at all costs because of the high level of domestic
unemployment. Even Jewish union members were opposed to any large influx of
Jewish refugees out of fear of job competition.
unleashed spontaneously on the Jewish
community of Vienna,” writes Stuart
Eizenstadt in Imperfect Justice, describing
what happened to the Jews of Vienna
from the moment the Nazis marched into
the city on May 15, 1938, which was
Shabbos Zachor, a portent of the evil that
followed
“I got a firsthand view from Kurt
Ladner, an Austrian Holocaust survivor.
As a boy, he recalled the stunning
transformation, over the first weekend
following [Hitler’s open-armed reception
in Vienna], from a country that tolerated
Jews to a nation of hatred. His next-door
neighbor, who only months earlier had
allowed him to take chocolate … opened
his window and shouted at him, ‘Heil
Hitler! Kill all the Jews.’”
A Holocaust survivor whose testimony
is in the Yad Vashem Archive stated, “They
threw everything down… They threw [all
our gold and silver] out the window. NonJewish women stood with their aprons to
catch the silver and gold. These were the
women who turned on the [Shabbos]
lights [for us].”
Another testimony from the Yad
Vashem Archive states, “We had a
Catholic family across the street from our
business. When we knocked at the door
that ninth of November [Kristallnacht],
they refused to open the door. They were
always friendly before…”
And a third recounts, “I was eleven
when Hitler came to Vienna. The next day,
people who had been friends suddenly
became enemies — overnight.”
These events of 1938 were but a few of
the strong warning signs of the impending
nightmare, one year before World War II
broke out. Nazi brutality was being
reported by the press daily outside of
Germany and Austria. Living conditions
were rapidly becoming intolerable, first in
Germany, then in Austria, after it was
annexed by Germany in March 1938.
And then, in November, there was
Kristallnacht. Newspaper headlines
throughout the U.S. screamed that the
Nazis had destroyed Jewish shops and
synagogues and looted Jewish homes
during the pogrom. The world was also
shocked to learn that twenty thousand to
thirty thousand Jews had already been
sent to concentration camps. Yet relatively
few responded.
Unfortunately, there were limited
options for emigration. Immigration to
the United States was extremely limited,
with strict quotas that were stringently
enforced. There was a strong current of
xenophobia running through America at
the time, colored by more than a little
anti-Semitism. According to Jonathan
Sarna, Professor of American Jewish
History at Brandeis University, 95 percent
of Americans favored the restrictive
immigration quotas that blocked Jews
from taking refuge here. Moreover, Sarna
says, 25 percent of American Jews also
favored the restrictions.
Other countries were not eager to
accept Jewish refugees either. In the
autumn of 1938 in Evian-Les-Bains,
France, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
convened
the
Intergovernmental
Committee on Political Refugees, whose
stated purpose was to make a concerted
effort to help German refugees.
Out of the thirty-two nations
represented at the meeting, the United
States included, only the delegate from the
Dominican Republic offered to accept
large numbers of Jewish refugees. (Only
472 Jews actually went there). The
conference was used by Hitler’s advisers as
a cynical public relations opportunity to
demonstrate that the Nazis were not alone
in their antipathy toward Jews.
Some Took Action
To be sure, there were some attempts to
help.
The
Jewish
Democratic
Congressman from Brooklyn, Emmanuel
Celler, proposed a law that would
temporarily extend the quotas to meet the
emergency. He called for the immigration
of up to twenty thousand Jewish children
from Germany, in addition to the regular
immigration quota. Sadly, the outbreak of
World War II in September of 1939
brought an end to Congressman Celler’s
initiative.
His efforts, however, were not totally in
vain. Brith Shalom, an American Jewish
fraternal order based in Philadelphia, was
one of several organizations that pledged
support to Celler, promising that the
Jewish children brought in under this law
would be sponsored and taken in by
Jewish families all across the U.S.
To achieve this goal, Brith Shalom
pledged to bring fifty children from
Vienna to the U.S. and assign them to
volunteer foster families. In early 1939,
they asked Gilbert Kraus, a Brith Shalom
member from Philadelphia, and his wife,
Eleanor, to head the project, outlining a
plan to persuade the U.S. State
Department to issue visas for fifty children
to be brought out of Austria.
Gilbert, a business attorney whose
father, Sol, had been a member of Brith
Shalom, was born into a prominent, wellestablished Jewish family in Philadelphia.
Eleanor Kraus was the well-educated
socialite daughter of Russian Jewish
immigrants. The Krauses were secular and
sent their two children to a Quaker school,
but they had a strong sense of Jewish
identity, as their actions showed.
Opposition
The
Krauses
undertook
this
dangerous mission, which entailed a
great deal of hard work. Funds raised by
Brith Shalom helped finance the project.
Concerned about the probability of
heavy opposition, Gilbert Kraus kept the
plan as quiet as possible, leaving behind
few written records and involving as few
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(Above) Steven
Pressman, writer,
producer, and
director of “50
Children: The Rescue
Mission of Mr. and
Mrs. Kraus.”
The Dangerous Journey
Armed with the affidavits, Gilbert Kraus
and Robert A. Schless, a German-speaking
pediatrician and family friend who
jumped at the chance to help by offering
to examine every child selected for rescue,
sailed for Europe.
Mrs. Kraus was warned by the State
Department that with the outbreak of war
imminent, it was too dangerous for a
woman to travel to Nazi Germany.
However, she got an urgent call from her
husband, who had arrived in Vienna,
telling her that with so much to do and so
little time, her help was desperately
needed. Three days later, Eleanor set sail to
join her husband, leaving behind the
couple’s two school-age children who, if
things went wrong, would be left orphans.
In Vienna, then teeming with
uniformed Nazis, they stayed at the Hotel
Bristol, a bastion of Nazi activity. (Adolf
Eichmann had already been sent to
Vienna to expedite the plan for making
Austria Judenrein).
At the hotel, the team contacted local
Photo courtesy Paul Beller
people as possible.
He did, in fact, encounter strong
opposition to the plan from three of
Philadelphia’s major Jewish leaders, who
threatened to do everything in their power
to stop the intended rescue. They were
concerned
that
increased
Jewish
immigration would further foment antiSemitism and endanger their own position
in American society. There was also
opposition
from
other
refugee
organizations that did not want Brith
Shalom to trespass on their turf and
pressed for the mission to be called off.
Even worse, Assistant Secretary of State
Breckenridge Long, who was in charge of
granting U.S. visas, actively obstructed the
immigration of refugees from Nazioccupied Europe before and during World
War II.
But Kraus was not deterred from doing
what he knew was right. He had tallied
the number of visas issued in Vienna
under the immigration quota and
compared them to the number actually
used, and he found that fifty were
available. With this information, he
traveled to Washington and met with
George Strausser Messersmith, an
assistant secretary of state, who had
previously served as United States
ambassador to Austria and also as head of
the U.S. Consulate in Germany from 1930
to 1934, during the rise of the Nazi party.
Understanding the gravity of the situation,
he referred Kraus to the American
Embassy in Berlin.
The visas were crucial documents
necessary to bring the children into
America. Also needed were affidavits
guaranteeing that the children would not
become burdens on the U.S. government.
To that end, Kraus and his wife called in
every favor they could from close friends
and casual acquaintances. For six weeks
Eleanor went from door to door and from
office to office, pleading for sponsorship
affidavits.
Using a slow-working manual
typewriter, Eleanor painstakingly filled out
fifty-four long, detailed visa applications
with the names of sponsors, and pages full
of personal and financial information; the
four extra, “just in case.”
Photo credit: Liz Perle
The USS President Harding.
Jewish agencies and began the process of
selection. Although their hotel rooms were
searched daily and their every movement
was followed by the Nazis, they set aside
fears for their own safety and sought fifty
healthy Jewish children who would be
able to withstand the terrible trauma of
separation from their parents for a
considerable period of time. The Krauses
went to the shabby building that served as
Vienna’s Jewish community center to
interview the children and found more
than six hundred youngsters and their
frantic parents waiting patiently in line.
They had to interview each child and
conduct a physical examination. During
these heart-wrenching sessions, the
Krauses sensed that they were making
choices that condemned those not chosen
to certain death. One child was ill with the
measles, but his father managed to
convince the Krauses that he was not that
sick and so he was included on the list.
Conversely, one of the chosen children,
five-year-old Heinrich Steinberger, became
ill at the last minute and had to be cut
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U.S. State Department Immigration Policy
Due to the efforts of Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long, 90 percent of
those eligible for immigration to the United States were not admitted, and 190,000
visas went unused.
Long is largely remembered for his obstructionist role when he was in charge of
granting refugee visas during World War II. He hampered rescue attempts, drastically
restricted immigration, and falsified the numbers of refugees admitted. In an intradepartmental memo in June 1940, Long wrote that State Department officials were to
keep European refugees, many of them Jewish, out of the United States.
“We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the
number of immigrants into the United States,” he wrote. “We could do this by simply
advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence
and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and
postpone the granting of the visas.”
from the list; he was replaced by another
child. (Heinrich would be killed in 1942 in
the Sobibor extermination camp.)
After the choices had been made,
Gilbert and Eleanor continued to be
besieged by calls and visits from parents of
children who had not made it onto the list.
Their heartbreaking task accomplished,
the Krauses made the dangerous trip from
Vienna to Berlin to secure the documents
needed to release the fifty children, half
boys and half girls. In Berlin, they checked
into the luxurious Hotel Adlon, unaware
that it was hosting gala celebrations for
the newly signed “Pact of Steel,” a military
alliance
between
Germany
and
Mussolini’s Italy.
The hotel was swarming with officers
dressed in Nazi and Fascist military
uniform, and Eleanor was more than a
little frightened. At one point, trembling
from head to toe, she found herself
standing in the elevator next to a top Nazi
official, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was
a member of Hitler’s inner circle.
In Berlin, Kraus went to the American
Embassy, where he pleaded for the
children’s release with American charge
d’affaires Raymond Geist. Kraus argued
that some U.S. visas already issued had
not actually been used; some recipients
had gone elsewhere, and others had died
or were unable to travel. This line of
reasoning convinced Geist, who agreed to
re-issue fifty of the unused visas for the
“Kraus children.”
Next, Gilbert confronted Gestapo
officials and underwent grueling
interrogations to obtain German passports
for the children. Eleanor reported that the
Nazi official in charge of issuing the
documents refused to address Gilbert, a
Jew, directly, referring all questions to his
aides. “Ask him what he wants,” he said
disdainfully in front of Kraus. Finally, after
nail-biting tension, Gilbert heard, “Tell
him he will get his passports.”
Because the United States and
Germany were not yet at war and because
the children had U.S. visas, they were
issued passports and were permitted to
leave Austria. The Krauses traveled back
to Vienna.
The team of adults and the children,
now legally permitted to leave Austria,
traveled by train to Berlin, then on to
Hamburg, where they boarded the USS
President Harding, bound for New York. As
the train left Vienna, there was another
poignant episode. The parents, whose
profound love for their children had
impelled them to make arrangements to
send the youngsters across the world to
safety, were forbidden to wave goodbye; it
was against Nazi law for Jews to give the
Nazi salute, and waving might be
construed as a salute.
The parents stood on the train
platform, which was crawling with Nazi
storm troopers, many with German
shepherds, in an orderly, quiet fashion,
their mouths smiling but their eyes red
with tears. The majority of the children
never saw their parents or siblings
again.
When they arrived in New York on June
3, 1939, , Kraus, determined to avoid
publicity, refused to allow the children to
be interviewed by the press. The children
were taken to a Brith Shalom-sponsored
summer
camp
in
Collegeville,
Pennsylvania, where a dormitory and a
staff of doctors, nurses, and teachers
awaited them. For the next three months,
they adapted to their new lives. The
children were later placed in foster homes,
or in some cases, with relatives.
The Documentary
The film was produced by journalist,
author, and filmmaker Steven Pressman,
the
husband
of
the
Krauses’
granddaughter Liz Perle, who graciously
granted Hamodia permission to base this
feature article on the film. Mr. Pressman
said that he is also writing a book by the
same title, due out this spring.
He views with admiration the activities
of the Krauses, who saved so many Jewish
lives and spent close to a full year and a
considerable amount of their own money
on the rescue project, not to mention the
time they spent away from their own
children.
“We will never know why they did what
they did in the face of such opposition.
They had to navigate a social setting in
which Jewish immigration was not going
to be popular,” Mr. Pressman stated. “They
were raised in a secular family, yet they
acted wholeheartedly on behalf of their
coreligionists in trouble across the ocean.
“I can’t help but think that they were
imbued with a special spark or spirit that
led them to do what they did. They acted
in a way that can and should be a life
lesson for us all.”
Mr. Pressman’s film is a call to action,
demonstrating how all men and women
should act when faced with evil. Its
purpose is to challenge people everywhere
to do what’s right, despite opposition and
ridicule.
The Krauses’ success illustrates the
potential for rescue that existed even
during those trying years. Their courage
and tenacity is a testimony to the human
capacity to make the right choices even in
extreme circumstances. Any one of us
might find himself or herself in a such a
position.
I
Let us never forget. 
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