Janusz Korczak (1878 -1942)

Korczak was a Polish-Jewish pediatrician and author who, despite several offers to escape, refused to abandon close to 200 Jewish orphans and went to an extermination camp with them during the Holocaust. 

Wikipedia:  Janusz Korczak

Yad Vashem:  Janusz Korczak

Japanese War Orphans and their caretakers

Thousands of Japanese children who were abandoned in China after WWII survived by their own strength and the kindness of strangers, most of whom were poor rural farmers in NE China and Inner Mongolia, who helped them and took them in.

Wikipedia:  Japanese orphans in China


War Orphan Recounts Feeling of Abandonment


Forgotten Plight of Foster Parents

Japanese War Orphans in China

Japanese War Orphans and the Challenges of Repatriation

George Hogg (1915 – 1945)

An Oxford \Economics graduate, George Hogg traveled to China in 1937, initially working as a journalist.  Moved by the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial army against the Chinese, he stayed helping Rewi Alley, a New Zealander Communist who had started a series of vocational schools inspired by an American idealist named Joseph Bailie.  In 1942, Hogg became the headmaster of the Bailie school in Shaanxi.  All of his students were boys, and most of them were orphans.  For the next two years, Hogg was father, teacher, and friend to these boys whom no one else wanted.  Unlike anyone else these Chinese boys encountered, he never punished them.

As the war against the Japanese escalated, the Kuomingtang (Nationalist) Party of China attempted to conscript Hogg's students in 1944.  To protect them, Hogg, with Alley, decided to move his 60 boys 700 miles away to Shandan.  They traversed dangerous terrain against incredible odds for 450 miles for a month on foot, and hired trucks to travel the rest of the way.

Just a few months later, Hogg contracted tetanus and died at age 30.  Alley took over as the new headmaster of the Shandan Bailie School.  But to this day, his students remember him fondly as the man who saved their lives.

A movie called Children of Huang Shi tells the story, with Jonathan Rhys Meyer as George Hogg.

More information:

The Independent:  Long March Across China
The Sunday Times:  The Heroic Englishman China Will Never Forget

Gladys Aylward

Gladys Aylward (1902 – 1970) was my childhood hero, ever since I read the book, "The Small Woman." There was a Hollywood movie made based on the book (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness with Ingrid Bergman), but as usual, it did not do justice to the real story.  In fact, Aylward was quite embarrassed and upset by the film's inaccuracies.

A parlormaid in Britain, Aylward had a burning desire to be a missionary to China, but did not pass the exams to join the formal missionary society to China.  Undaunted, she saved up enough money for a passage to China and went on her own to help an aging missionary in Yangchen in 1930.  During the next eight years, she established a wide reputation for kindness and fairness, as well as a soft spot for taking in orphans into the inn that she owned and operated.  One orphan became five, then became 20, as the years went on.  She became a Chinese citizen in 1936.

In 1938, when the Japanese attacked her town, Aylward had about 100 orphans at her inn.  With a Japanese price on her head (dead or alive), she narrowly escaped with her orphans from Yangchen.   She decided to take them to a Chinese government orphanage in Xian 100 miles away.  Walking.  With almost no food.   Across mountains off the regular paths (to avoid capture).  Across the Yellow River.  For 27 days.   She carried toddlers on her back at all times, subsisting on rice water.  When she arrived in Xian, she was deliriously ill with typhus, pneumonia, and malnutrition.

Though she reestablished her ministry in Xian, she was eventually forced to leave in 1947 when the Communists took over China.  After spending 10 years back in Britain, she moved to Taiwan where she started another orphanage and lived the remainder of her years.

This anecdote illustrates her modest, matter-of-fact attitude for which she earned so much respect in China.

Gladys returned from China to England in the late 1940's an unknown missionary. Alan Burgess, who was producing a series on war heroes for the BBC radio, visited her in the hope a missionary could tell him about heroes she had heard about in China. Well, no, she said in her rusty English. She didn't actually know any heroes.

     "What about yourself?" he asked the little woman half-heartedly. "Did you have a scrape or two?" 

     "I doubt people who listen to BBC would think I've done anything interesting." 

     "Didn't you even come into contact with the Japanese invaders?" he pressed. 

     "Yes," she answered cryptically. It wouldn't be very forgiving if she told Alan Burgess the Japanese had shot her down in a field outside Tsechow.  Bombed her too.  In Yangcheng.  Strafed her near Lingchuang too.  Smashed her on the noggin once with a rifle butt too.  Finally put a price on her head: dead or alive. "Some Japanese are very nice, you know," she volunteered. 

     "Apparently your life in China was rather sheltered," he grunted dryly. 

     Gladys had to offer the poor man something. "I did take some children to an orphanage near Sian." 

     "You don't say?" he grumbled, not hiding disappointment. "Kids? To an orphanage?" 

     "Yes, we had to cross some mountains." 

     Burgess perked up.  "Real mountains?" 

     "Yes, I believe you would call them real mountains. The journey was made more difficult because we couldn't walk on the main trails. Oh, and then we had to get across the Yellow River too." 

     "Isn't that the notorious river that drowns so many it's called 'China's Sorrow'?" 

     Burgess was more and more aghast as Gladys detailed her trek. His voice choked. "You ran out of food? You had no money? Just you and 100 kids - many of whom were toddlers - trekked for one month across mountains, across the Yellow River, ducking Japanese patrols and dive bombers? And at Sian you were diagnosed with typhus and pneumonia and malnutrition? Yes, Miss Aylward, I think people who listen to BBC would think you've done something interesting…"

[Source: The Small Woman by Alan Burgess, 1957, revised addition, 1969]

For more information:
Biography
Sermons by Gladys Aylward

The Children Nobody Wants

Orphans have a hard time finding new families.  But children orphaned by war have an even tougher time.  For one, there are so many of them, all at once.  Secondly, the trauma they have undergone supercede the already unspeakable grief of losing both parents.  Their needs are overwhelming but for the staunchest of us.

This week, we will look at extraordinary people who stepped up to the plate and dedicated astonishing loyalty to these children no one else wants: war orphans.

The Budapest Gang, Part III

Switzerland


In 1942, Carl Lutz was the Vice Consul for the Swiss Consulate in Budapest, Hungary.   Coming from service as the Consul General in Jaffa, Palestine, Lutz worked immediately with the Jewish Agency for Palestine to help 10,000 Jewish children to emigrate.  When the Nazis arrived in Budapest in 1944, he got permission to issue 8,000 protective letters to help Hungarian Jews emigrate to Palestine as well.

Just like Sanz-Briz from Spain, Lutz extended the protective letters to entire families, then multiplied the 8000 permits indefinitely by simply numbering all of them between 1 and 8000.  Just like the rest of the Budapest gang, he set up 76 safe houses around Budapest bearing the Swiss flag to hide Jewish refugees.  He is credited with saving 62,000 Jewish lives.

Friedrich Born was sent to Budapest in May 1944 to represent Switzerland with the International Committee of the Red Cross.   He recruited as many as 4000 Jews to work in Red Cross offices, granting a protected status, as well as issued protective passes for 15,000 Jews.  He is believed to have saved 11,000 to 15,000 lives in his 7 months in Budapest.

Vatican

Monsignor Angelo Rotta was already 72 years old when he was sent as the Papal Nuncio (Ambassador) to Budapest in 1944.  In addition to protesting the deportation and persecution of the Jews vigorously, he issued around 15,000 protection letters and baptismal certificates.  Like Wallenberg, he sometimes distributed these in plain view of the SS. 

Summary

These diplomats found strength alone and in numbers, using what tools they have at their disposal to do something instead of nothing.  They took extreme risks and defied authorities to save human lives.

"I could not have acted otherwise, therefore I accept all that has befallen me with love."  -- Aristides de Sousa Mendes

The Budapest Gang, Part II

(Continued from here.)

Sweden
By 1944, the Holocaust was well known to those who cared to know.  In 1944, Hungary was deporting 10,000 to 12,000 Jews a day to Auschwitz.  At this time, a well-connected Swedish businessman who spoke both German and Hungarian named Raoul Wallenberg expressly asked the Swedish government to send him to Budapest as a "diplomat" to lead the rescue of Jewish refugees.   As first secretary to the Swedish Legation, Wallenberg arrived in Budapest in July 1944.


At this time, Carl Ivan Danielsson was the Swedish Minister (equivalent of Ambassador) in Budapest.  Lars Berg was an Attaché.  Valdemar Langlet served as the cultural attaché and represented the Swedish Red Cross at the Legation.  Per Anger had been the second secretary of the Swedish Legation in Budapest since 1942.    Anger described how the Swedish Legation became aware of the genocide and decided to save as many Jewish refugees as they could.

"First then everything was revealed. Mainly by stories from people who managed to escape. We sent home reports of extermination camps, sketches of the gas chambers in Auschwitz...//... We became witnesses to what we didn't think was possible: a systematic extermination of people." (Interview with Vi magazine.)


"The first days we couldn't do so much. I mean, we didn't know what was going to happen. We understood that now would be a hard time for the Jewish population and it (the persecutions) started just a few days later. So then we were forced to mobilize our powers. From that moment everything that had to do with trade with Sweden or other routine errands were of course put aside, and we concentrated... the whole legation concentrated on one thing. To save... try to save human lives."  (Interview with Dr. Paul Levine.)  (Source.)

Per Anger originated the idea to grant provisional passports (usually given to Swedes who had lost their real passports) to Jews seeking asylum.  The Swedish Legation persuaded the Hungarian government to recognize all holders of the provisional passports as Swedish citizens who would be exempt from wearing the yellow star of David.  Anger also invented special certificates for everyone who applied for Swedish citizenship that would do the same thing.  They had issued several hundred of these when Wallenberg arrived.

Building on Anger's initiative, Wallenberg and Anger designed official looking protective passes called Schutzpasse, complete with Swedish colors, stamps, seals, and signatures.  Though they had no real legal authority, Schutzpasse were respected and honored both by German and Hungarian authorities.

Then they raised money to buy and rent 32 buildings, which were all marked with oversized Swedish flags as the "Swedish Library" or the "Swedish Research Institute."  Holders of Schutzpasse were housed and fed in these safe houses until they were able to leave Hungary.  It is estimated the buildings sheltered almost 20,000 people. (Source)  Langlet and his wife, Nina were in charge of distributing food and medicine; they also issued their own protection letters under the authority of the Red Cross.

Not content with that, Anger and Wallenberg were known for daring rescues at trains bound for Auschwitz.  In an article by the Jerusalem Post:

Says Anger, ”Raoul was a born actor, capable of bluff, bluster, and bribery, using whatever means were necessary to save the Jews of the city. Shy and reserved one moment, he would be barking official-sounding orders in German the next, refusing to take no for an answer."


...Wallenberg, often with Anger at his side, would visit the Jews as they were gathered for deportation and pull many out of line, shoving the life-saving passes into their hands, admonishing them for ”forgetting their papers.”

More than once the two diplomats jumped aboard the crowded death trains and dragged dozens of Jews off, warning the incredulous Nazis not to ”get in the way of official Swedish business.”

 Anger recounts two of these incidents:

"When Wallenberg one day was somewhere else, I went to a station from where a train with Jews was about to depart. There was no time to be diplomatic with the Germans. I explained that a terrible mistake had been done because they apparently were on their way to deport Jews with Swedish protective passes. If they weren't released immediately I would see to it that Veesenmayer was notified. The German train commander didn't dare risking being reported to the feared Veesenmayer. I went in to the wagons to call for names, but only found two Jews with protective passes. With the help of the present Hungarian police officer, Batizfalvy, who in secrecy worked in cooperation with Raoul Wallenberg and me, I succeeded, in defiance of the SS commanders order, to leave the station with 150 Jews towards freedom, 148 of them without protective passes."  (Source)

“I tried to copy him,” said Anger, who also accompanied Wallenberg on death march rescue missions to the Hungarian-Austrian border. “He always found a solution, invented a new way of saving people.”  He would say to startled Jews on their way to Auschwitz, “Oh, you remember—the Hungarians confiscated your passports,” related Anger. “They remembered, and we took fifty people away.” (Source)

Another account:

... he [Wallenberg] climbed up on the roof of the train and began handing in protective passes through the doors which were not yet sealed. He ignored orders from the Germans for him to get down, then the Arrow Cross men began shooting and shouting at him to go away. He ignored them and calmly continued handing out passports to the hands that were reaching out for them. I believe the Arrow Cross men deliberately aimed over his head, as not one shot hit him, which would have been impossible otherwise. I think this is what they did because they were so impressed by his courage. After Wallenberg had handed over the last of the passports he ordered all those who had one to leave the train and walk to the caravan of cars parked nearby, all marked in Swedish colours. I don't remember exactly how many, but he saved dozens off that train, and the Germans and Arrow Cross were so dumbfounded they let him get away with it. (Account of Sandor Ardai, Wallenberg's driver)

Once Wallenberg and staff even saved Jews being murdered in the freezing Danube River:

Nagy, then fourteen years old, will always remember Christmas Eve 1944, when the residents of the safe house next door to his were rousted from their beds, marched to the Danube River, and shot by the Nazis. Jews were frequently tied together three in a row on the bank of the Danube. The middle person was shot, sending all three into the freezing water to drown. A woman from Wallenberg’s office recalled an occasion when Wallenberg heard that Hungarian Nazis were shooting women and children at the river. He asked his staff who could swim. “We went—it was a cold night—and jumped into the Danube—the water was icy cold.” They saved fifty or sixty people.

When bombed railtracks made train deportations to Auschwitz impossible, Adolf Eichmann made the Jews march 180 kilometers to the next working train station from November 10 to December 10, 1944. Wallenberg and his crew tried to help with the marches as well, though with Eichmann involved, they were able to do less.  Anger wrote in his book:

"One of the first days in December 1944 Wallenberg and I took a car ride along the road the Jews [were] marching on. We passed these crowds of miserable people, more dead than alive. With gray faces they staggered forward under chops and hits from the soldier's rifles. The road was lined by dead bodies. We had our car filled with food that we managed to distribute in spite of prohibitions, but it didn't last very long. At Hegyeshalom we saw how the ones who arrived were handed over to a German SS commando under Eichmann, who counted them like cattle. '489--correct' ('vierhundertneunundachtzig--stimmt gut!'). The Hungarian officer received a receipt that everything was in order.

Before this handing over we managed to save some hundreds of Jews. Some had Swedish protective passes, others were gotten out by pure bluffing. Wallenberg didn't give up and made renewed journeys when he in similar ways managed to reunite some additional Jews with Budapest."

One survivor, Edith Ernster, wife of Lars Ernster, a survivor on the board of the Nobel Foundation, notes with humor:

"It seemed so strange - this country of super-aryans, the Swedes, taking us under their wings. Often, when an Orthodox Jew went by, in his hat, beard and sidelocks, we'd say, 'Look, there goes another Swede.'"

Although the Swedish diplomats did not defy the orders of their governments, they acted with great risk to themselves.  Raoul Wallenberg had to sleep in a different house every night under threats of capture.  Despite the extreme danger of Soviet occupation, they all decided to stay in Budapest to guard their safe houses until the very end.

Sadly, when the Soviets arrived in Budapest in January 1945, they arrested Anger, Wallenberg, and everyone at the Swedish Legation.  They were accused of spying, presumably because the Russians could not believe the Swedes were all there simply to help Jews.  All others were released shortly, Anger after three months in prison, but Wallenberg was never seen again.  Anger dedicated the rest of his life to finding out what happened to Wallenberg.  It is generally believed that Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison in 1947.

Though it is unclear exactly how many Jews were saved by the Swedish Legation, conservative estimates run into the tens of thousands.