Wilfrid Berthold Jacob Israel (11 July 1899 – 1 June 1943) was an Anglo-German businessman and philanthropist, born into a wealthy Anglo-German Jewish family, who was active in the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany, and who played a significant role in the Kindertransport.
Described as "gentle and courageous" and "intensely secretive", Wilfrid Israel avoided public office and shunned publicity, but had, according to his biographer Naomi Shepherd, an "almost hypnotic" ability to influence friends and colleagues. Martin Buber described him as "a man of great moral stature, dedicated to the service of others".
He was killed when his civilian passenger plane, en route from Lisbon to Bristol, was shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter patrol over the Bay of Biscay.
Biography
Wilfrid Israel attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium in Berlin-Charlottenburg and, for a few months in 1911, the Hochalpines Lyceum in Zuoz/Institut Engiadina (today Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz) in Switzerland.
Following World War I, he began to travel the world, including the Far East and took a special interest in works of art of this region. With the outbreak of the global economic crisis, he helped bring the Habima Theatre to Mandatory Palestine.
On 27 September 1931, Wilfrid Israel took his Indian guest V. A. Sundaram to his friend Albert Einstein's summer home in the German town of Caputh to meet Einstein. Sundaram was Mahatma Gandhi's disciple and special envoy, whom Wilfrid Israel had met while visiting India and visiting the Indian leader's home in 1925. During the visit, Einstein wrote a short letter to Gandhi that was delivered to him through his envoy. Gandhi responded quickly with his own letter. Although in the end, Einstein and Gandhi were unable to meet as they had hoped, the direct connection between them was established through Wilfrid Israel.
In 1932, Recha Freier appealed to Wilfrid for financial aid to seed the beginning of her vision for Youth Aliyah to Palestine to save Jewish lives. Wilfrid Israel provided the funds. Initially, twelve young people were sent to the Ben Shemen Youth Village in Palestine.Shepherd, Naomi (1984). A Refuge from Darkness: Wilfrid Israel and the Rescue of The Jews.
Wilfrid Israel's family-owned the Nathan Israel Department Store in Berlin, one of the largest and oldest stores in pre-World War II Germany. From early in the Nazi period, Wilfrid Israel used the business as a base from which to engineer the release of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps: many in the Nazi leadership had accounts at the store and were never charged. Israel also financed the emigration of his Jewish employees (roughly a third of the staff) by paying them two years' salary at the time they left Germany.
Philanthropy was only a small part of his rescue activities. Israel, though arrested and beaten and followed on his journeys abroad by the Gestapo, attempted, through influential contacts in Britain, to persuade the British to grant admission to "transit camps" in Britain for Jews released from the German concentration camps; eight thousand young men were saved in this way. He also lobbied the Foreign Office directly for this purpose through visits to the British Embassy (recorded in the British National Archives). Less officially, he formed a working partnership with Frank Foley, the British intelligence agent who was Passport Officer at the British consulate in Berlin, vouching for the characters of Jews in line to emigrate, while warning Foley of German agents who attempted to infiltrate.
Together with Hubert Pollack, a Jewish statistician who worked under Wilfrid Israel in the "Hilfsverein" (lit. 'Aid association'; German Jewish welfare and emigration organization) and who also worked secretly under Foley, the three of them formed a secretive mechanism to save as many Jews as possible from the concentration camps. Pollack had contacts in the Gestapo; Wilfrid had money and direct links with sponsors abroad; Foley was the man in charge of issuing visas. Pollack, always carrying a Mauser pistol in his pocket was the essential intermediary between Wilfrid, Foley and the Gestapo. He met them in small cafes, where money could easily pass hands. People came to Wilfrid pleading for his help in releasing their relations from the camps; Wilfrid gave the necessary funds to Pollack; Pollack obtained the documents; and Foley granted visas to those who Wilfrid and Pollack told him were honest people whose names had been blackened by the Gestapo. Pollack and Wilfrid kept Foley informed of any agents planted by the Gestapo in the lines of applicants for visas. In the last years and months up to the Kristallnacht, they managed to save some 10,000 Jews.Smith, Michael (1999). Foley: The spy who saved 10,000 Jews. London: Hodder & Stoughton. .Weidenfeld and Nicolson (1984). Wilfrid Israel, German Jewry's Secret Ambassador. London.
Wilfrid Israel played a significant role in the Kindertransport, the rescue of 10,000 German Jewish children after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. By this time, most of the Jewish leadership in Germany had been arrested, and Israel took over the running of the Hilfsverein, the German Jewish welfare and emigration organization established at the turn of the century. He (as well as others) urged the British Anglo-Jewish leadership to ensure the rescue of German Jewish children, but without their parents, to England. The Anglo-Jewish leadership organized a deputation to the British prime minister. However, in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom, no British Jew was prepared to visit Germany, and the British government was initially skeptical about the willingness of parents to part with their children. But a Quaker delegation, all of whose members had previously worked with Wilfrid Israel on relief matters (a link going back to the post-World War I era) was sent out, and directed by Israel and, together with the German women's organisation, the Frauenbund, met with the parents and provided the British government with the necessary reassurance.
The Israel department store in Berlin was first vandalised, then taken over by the Nazis after a forced sale at a fraction of its worth, and Wilfrid Israel left Germany, but returned on the eve of the war to organise the despatch of the last contingent of children, only leaving when warned that his arrest was imminent. An example of Wilfred Israel's foresight and compassion is that he arranged to give money and other support to many employees of the Israel firm to aid them to flee the country, many ultimately to America.Private communication from one such high-level employee.
Settling in London, he first worked with Bloomsbury House, the organization dealing with German Jewish refugees interned as 'enemy aliens'. In 1941, he became research assistant on Germany to a Royal Institute of International Affairs committee based at Balliol College, Oxford, now working for the Foreign Office, and at the same time advised the Refugee Department of the F.O. on movements of refugees throughout Europe. Among his papers from that period are those dealing with the question of German resistance to Hitler (which he dismissed, despite his friendship with Adam von Trott, one of its members)."Guide to the Papers of the Israel Family 1814–1996", AR 25140, Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History. Retrieved 6 September 2006.
Israel was a descendant on his English mother's side of the first Chief Rabbi of Britain. Contemporaries described him as an elegant, elusive figure most famously inspiring the character Bernhard Landauer in Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin. Landauer figures prominently in his own right in the autobiographical Christopher and His Kind, by the same author.
He was a friend of Albert Einstein, the philosopher Martin Buber, and Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of the state of Israel. In his post-World War I refugee work, he was in contact with the British Quakers. His Anglo-Jewish connections included Herbert Samuel, previously Home Secretary in the British government and leader of the British Liberal Party. These contacts were valuable in his later rescue missions.
Brenda Bailey, daughter of a British Quaker mother and a German Quaker father, wrote: "After Kristallnacht, leadership was again shown by the Jewish businessman Wilfrid Israel, who contacted the Council for German Jewry in London, informing them that extraordinary measures must now be taken to save at least the children."
Initiation of the Kindertransport Official and non-official roles Wilfrid Israel is described in the British Foreign Office records, now in the National Archives in London, as 'chief representative of German Jewry'. His repeated appeals to the British government on behalf of German Jewry are documented there. There is also a reference to these attempts in copies of his personal letters now deposited in a Wilfrid Israel archive in the Wiener Library London (the main source of Holocaust records in the UK, where the records of the Council for German Jewry are also to be found).
Situation on and after the Kristallnacht From 1937 Wilfrid Israel was active in the work of the Hilfsverein, the central German Jewish organization for emigration. It was to the Hilfsverein that all Jews lacking funds and contacts enabling them to emigrate (the vast majority by 1937) applied for help. By the time of the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938 Wilfrid Israel was the director (Vorsitzender) of the Hilfsverein. By this time the family firm which he had headed had been requisitioned by the Nazis, and most of the other official male heads of German Jewish organizations had been arrested.
It was as the representative of German Jewry that Wilfrid Israel had described the details of Nazi persecution to British diplomats and government officials visiting Berlin, and also proposals for emigration to Britain. A last desperate plea, following the Kristallnacht, was made in London (together with two other German Jewish leaders, Paul Eppstein and Otto Hirsch). This was rejected. However: another of Wilfrid Israel's proposals, for the establishment of a transit camp in Britain for young men released from the concentration camps, was accepted, saving eight thousand lives - a no less impressive rescue than that of the Kindertransport. Wilfrid Israel did indeed use his personal connections in Britain, most notably Lord Samuel (a previous Home Secretary) and at the time of the Kristallnacht the head of the Council for German Jewry- which had given assurances to the British government for support of Jewish refugees. It was to this organization that Wilfrid Israel turned, again on behalf of German Jews as a whole, and contacted Samuel with the request for the rescue of unaccompanied Jewish children.
The request was accepted only after two deputations to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary by Samuel - and Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader. The second deputation included representatives of the British Quakers, who visited Germany and under Wilfrid Israel's guidance were able to confirm that Jewish parents were indeed willing to part with their children. Wilfrid Israel's connection with the Quakers went back to the period following World War I when he was also active in refugee work.
The relevant three weeks On Nov. 1st, Lord Herbert Samuel led an Anglo-Jewish deputation to the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, asking for the British government to relax its stringent immigration laws to permit the entry of the children. He received only sympathy and a non-committal answer.
On the morning of Nov. 8th, when the Goebbels press campaign first became obvious, Wilfrid Israel, representing the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland, called on George Ogilvie-Forbes, the British Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin. He came "to express grave apprehension that reprisals will be taken on Jews in Germany".