Wilfrid B. Israel
Encyclopedia
Wilfrid B. Israel was a German-born Jew who played an important role in the Kindertransport
Kindertransport
Kindertransport is the name given to the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and the Free City of Danzig...

 and the rescue of Jews in the Holocaust. He was killed when his plane was shot down by the Nazis.

Biography

Wilfrid Israel's family owned Israel's Department Store
Israel's Department Store
Israel's Department Store , also Nathan Israel's Department Store and House of Israel, was a department store in Berlin. The business was started in 1815 by Nathan Israel as a small second-hand store in the Molkenmarkt...

 in Berlin, one of the largest chain stores in pre-World War II Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. In 1938, the store was ransacked during Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...

 violence perpetrated by Nazi Party supporters. Following the takeover of the store, Israel, who had run the business with his brother, fled to England. In the summer of 1939, Israel took up a research position at Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

. From there, he tried to establish contact with the German underground through Sir Stafford Cripps
Stafford Cripps
Sir Richard Stafford Cripps was a British Labour politician of the first half of the 20th century. During World War II he served in a number of positions in the wartime coalition, including Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Minister of Aircraft Production...

, Britain's foreign minister, and organized ship transports for Jewish children escaping from Nazi-occupied Europe.

Israel was a descendant on his English mother’s side of the first Chief Rabbi of Britain. Biographers describe him as an elegant, elusive figure who became the model for characters in British novels of the period such as Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...

’s Goodbye to Berlin. He was a friend of Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...

, the philosopher Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....

 and Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....

, 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 Liberal party. These contacts were valuable in his later rescue missions.

Rescue of Jews

Defying the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

, despite arrest and maltreatment, Wilfrid Israel protected his thousand employees and ensured the safe exodus of the Jews among them. The Israel firm refused to fly the Nazi flag and was the last such business to close its doors in 1939. Through a British agent, Frank Foley, passport officer at the Berlin consulate he kept British intelligence informed of Nazi activities. Israel's chief pre-war achievement was his role in the transfer of thousands of Jewish children to Britain in what became known as the Kindertransport. The rescue of the children was difficult to carry out, because the German Jewish leadership of the Reichsvertretung, the communal organisation, and the Hilfsverein, the self help body, had no access to British politicians and the Anglo Jewish refugee bodies which financed the exodus could not visit Nazi Germany. Through Israel's efforts, some ten thousand Jewish children were saved, although few saw their families again.

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".

Death and commemoration

On 26 March 1943 Israel left London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 for Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 and spent the next two months investigating the situation of Jews on the peninsula; during World War II the fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 regimes in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 and Portugal sympathized with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 but refused to hand over Jews to the Germans. By the end of his trip Israel had found as many of 1,500 Jewish refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...

s living in Spain, many of whom he aided in finding passage to Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

. Before Israel left the peninsula he had proposed a plan to the British government to aid the Jewish refugees in Spain. Israel was killed on 1 June 1943 when British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 was shot down over the Bay of Biscay
Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay is a gulf of the northeast Atlantic Ocean located south of the Celtic Sea. It lies along the western coast of France from Brest south to the Spanish border, and the northern coast of Spain west to Cape Ortegal, and is named in English after the province of Biscay, in the Spanish...

 by eight German Junkers Ju 88
Junkers Ju 88
The Junkers Ju 88 was a World War II German Luftwaffe twin-engine, multi-role aircraft. Designed by Hugo Junkers' company through the services of two American aviation engineers in the mid-1930s, it suffered from a number of technical problems during the later stages of its development and early...

s.

Tribute letter from Albert Einstein

Princetown, N.J. VI. 14. `43.

Dear Mrs. Israel,
A deep desire prompts me to write to you as I know your great anxiety regarding the fate of your son. Never in my life have I come in contact with a being so noble, so strong and as selfless as he was – in very truth a living work of art.

In these times of mass-misfortune, which so few are able to stand up to – one feels the presence of this “chosen one” as a Liberator from despair for mankind.

I dare yet to hope that through a miracle he has been spared to us. Yet it urges me,
though so helpless, to assure you of my deepest sympathy in these most tragic hours.

With heartfelt wishes,

A. Einstein

Wilfrid Israel Museum

The Wilfrid Israel Museum in Kibbutz Hazorea
Hazorea
HaZore'a is a kibbutz in northern Israel. Located in the west of the Jezreel Valley, it falls under the jurisdiction of Megiddo Regional Council...

, Israel, is an archaeology and art museum dedicated to the memory of Wilfrid Israel. The museum, which opened in 1951, houses Wilfrid's unique collection, to which many artifacts have been added over the years. The museum displays has permanent exhibitions of the art of India, China, Thailand, Cambodia, the art of ancient Near East, and local archaeology. In addition, the museum holds changing exhibitions of modern painting, sculpture, photography and textiles. It offers a wide range of community educational programs for children, youth and adults, including guided tours of the museum's permanent and temporary exhibitions as well as creative hands-on activities in the museum's art workshop.

Further reading

  • Ian Colvin (1957), Flight 777 (Evans Brothers)
  • WILFRID ISRAEL JULY 11TH, 1899 - JUNE1ST, 1943. London, Marsland Publications LTD, 1944. 1st edition. Cloth, 12mo, 50 pages
  • Dessa, A Tribute to Kaufhaus N. Israel 1815-1939, Switzerland
    Switzerland
    Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

    : Deborah Petroz-Abeles, 2003
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