A Happy, Fairytale Ending

By Peter Nichols

As night descended over Europe in the spring of 1939, in the brief twilight between Kristallnacht and the outbreak of World War II, a risky, against-all-odds rescue mission was underway to bring 50 Jewish children out of Nazi Germany and to America. With no official government backing or protection, Philadelphians Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, along with Robert Schless, MD 1916, undertook the long-shot effort with support from the fraternal organization Brith Sholom.

Gil Kraus was a well-heeled and well-connected Philadelphia lawyer with a reputation for being tough, resourceful, and relentless. His wife, Eleanor, was a homemaker, formidable in her devotion and pluck. Schless was a pediatrician who took care of the two Kraus children. He was also fluent in German. All three were Jews.

Schless had matriculated into Jefferson Medical College directly from high school in 1912. During World War I, he served with the Royal Army Medical Corps at a base outside London and later enlisted in the U.S. Navy, becoming one of the nation’s first flight surgeons. Following the war, he became chief of Pediatrics at Philadelphia’s highly regarded Jewish Hospital, now Einstein Healthcare Network.

Schless was tall and slender, easygoing and mild-mannered. He wore gold wire-rimmed glasses and favored meticulously knotted bow ties. He had a reputation for caring about injustice and misfortune, and for taking action at a personal cost. During the Depression, while he was acting chief of the city’s Bureau of Charities and Correction, he once took out a $5,000 personal loan to cover the payroll for his workers.

When the Krauses told him about their plan to rescue 50 Jewish kids, Schless, who had recently been widowed, had three sons of his own, not to mention a medical practice. The couple suggested he take a few days to think about whether he wanted to be a part of the unlikely operation. “I’ve already decided,” he told them. He was in.

By this time, news stories were reporting that it was illegal for Jews in Germany and Austria to own a business or factory. They were deprived of civil rights and police protection, subjected to arrest and mob violence, robbed of property, ejected from employment, and barred from public relief. Many had no money to emigrate even if they could get a visa. Joseph Goebbels was demanding an international solution to the “Jew problem.”

“Gil, this is really crazy!” Eleanor protested when he first broached the idea. “No one in his right mind would go into Nazi Germany right now. It’s not safe, especially for Jews.” As they labored through dense thickets of paperwork and red tape before embarking on their journey, a State Department official lowered his voice and cautioned, “I do not think you should go to Germany. In fact, I urge you most strongly not to go.” Perhaps the greatest measure of the threat they faced was the fact that thousands of parents were eager to hand over their children to strangers who could take them away to safety.

Immersing himself in America’s rigid immigration laws and strict refugee quotas, Gil noticed that approved visas sometimes went unclaimed. He proposed using these “dead” visas for the children and offered to travel personally to Nazi Germany to select and transport them back to America, all with funding from Brith Sholom. At no point did he try to sidestep rules or go around procedures of the immigration system, although he had to be shrewd about who to approach, due to intense anti-immigration sentiment and government officials who were openly anti-Semitic. Sympathetic authorities couldn’t guarantee that visas would be available or that Nazi functionaries would cooperate. The rescuers departed with little more than an unofficial nod and their own bravery, doggedness, and blind faith. At no point, from beginning to end, was there any certainty of success.

After arriving in Berlin, the group made its way to Vienna, where conditions for Jews were deteriorating alarmingly. Buildings were draped with swastikas, and images of Hitler hung in shops. The Gestapo monitored their movements. Signs proclaiming “Juden verboten” greeted them everywhere. Mostly they ignored them, although not without trepidation. In their hotel rooms, they heard marching troops and the sound of heavy tanks and mounted guns at night.

As word spread about the rescue mission, families lined up outside a Jewish community center. With the help of Hedy Neufeld, a former medical student who would no longer be able to practice because she was Jewish, they began interviewing parents and children. Since they both spoke German, Neufeld and Schless asked most of the questions.

“It was as if we had drawn up in a lifeboat in a most turbulent sea,” Eleanor wrote in her diary. “Each parent seemed to say, ‘Here, yes, freely, gladly, take my child to a safer shore.’” Schless advised taking only healthy children who could endure the long voyage and those old enough to withstand separation from parents. Most would be left behind.

Even as they made their selections, back in Berlin all the paperwork was in order, but embassy officials still couldn’t assure the rescuers that there would be visas. They decided to proceed as planned and bring the 50 children back to the capital by train, and then, if luck held, on to the port city of Hamburg.

The children, each with a small suitcase, and parents gathered in the dark at the Vienna train station hours before the scheduled departure. Storm troopers and attack dogs were positioned among the families on the platform.

“The parents stood in completely orderly and quiet fashion,” Eleanor wrote. “Their eyes were fixed on the faces of their children. Their mouths were smiling, but their eyes were red and strained.” Jews were forbidden to give the Nazi salute, and parents risked being arrested if they waved goodbye. As the train pulled away, they simply watched their children disappear from sight.

In Berlin the next day, 50 exhausted and homesick children entered the American embassy to be interviewed again. Gil returned from bringing the first batch upstairs to be examined by embassy officials. “What about the visas? What about the visas?” Eleanor pleaded. He sat down beside her and leaned close. “There are 50 visas waiting for us,” he whispered. “All our worries are over.”

The next day, the children with their rescuers boarded the SS President Harding and set sail for New York City. During the voyage, Schless gave daily English lessons to the children, and they began calling him Uncle Bob, although some still called him Herr Doktor. Ten days after leaving Hamburg, the ship sailed past the Statue of Liberty carrying the largest group of “unaccompanied” children saved from the Holocaust, which claimed some 1.5 million children.

Halfway through the ocean voyage, Schless confided to Eleanor Kraus, “I made a very great mistake in leaving Hedy behind. I am in love with her and want to marry her.”

Eleanor had sensed their growing fondness and was miffed that Schless had taken this long to sort out his feelings. He sent Neufeld a ship-to-shore cable that included a marriage proposal. The next morning, he met the Krauses at breakfast and reported that Neufeld had said, “Yes.”

Within weeks of arriving in America, Schless turned around and set sail for Vienna, where he married Neufeld in July 1939. While he was abroad, Brith Sholom held its annual convention, where Philadelphia congressman Leon Sacks hailed the rescue of the 50 children. He singled out Schless as a “true healer in the suffering of humanity.”

The couple returned to the United States not long after, and Schless resumed his pediatric practice. He was living with Hedy in Bern, Switzerland, when he died in 1972 at the age of 77.

Eleanor Kraus kept a record of her observations and feelings during the improbable rescue mission. Amid the miracle of 50 lives saved was yet another miracle of love that blossomed in a time of fear and menace.

“It seemed like a wonderful and magical ending,” she wrote. “It was a happy, fairytale ending.”

The main source for this story is 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple’s Extraordinary Rescue Mission Into the Heart of Nazi Germany by Steven Pressman.