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". [1]
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.
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 meet his friend, Albert Einstein, at his summer home in the town of Caputh. 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 provided the funds. Initially, twelve young people were sent to the Ben Shemen Youth Village in Palestine. [2]
Wilfrid Israel's family-owned 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" 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. [3] [4]
Wilfrid Israel played a significant role in the Kindertransport, the rescue of 10,000 German Jewish children after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. [5] [6] 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 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 Anglo-Jew was prepared to visit Germany, and the British government was initially dubious 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 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. [7] [ better source needed ]
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). [8]
Israel was a descendant on his English mother's side of the first Chief Rabbi of Britain.[ citation needed ] Contemporaries described him as an elegant, elusive figure most famously inspiring the character Bernhard Landauer in Christopher Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin . He figures prominently in his own right in the autobiographical Christopher and His Kind , by the same author. [9]
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. [10]
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." [11]
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).
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.
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".
On Nov. 9th, Wilfrid Israel telephoned Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organisation, in London. Weizmann immediately telephoned the Foreign Office. He was "in considerable distress" as he told of his information that the situation in Germany had "changed most dangerously during the last 24 hours". The German Jews thought that the only way to save the situation was for 'some prominent non-Jewish Englishman to go over to Berlin immediately".
On the same day Anglo-Jewry leaders representing the CGJ, meet in London with Sir Michael Bruce and request him to immediately go to Berlin, meet with Wilfrid Israel and other leaders "... who are only awaiting the arrival of a messenger to transmit reports on the treatment of our people."
On Nov. 15th, Wilfrid cabled the Council for German Jewry with details of the problems facing the community, and proposed the immediate rescue of German-Jewish children and young people up to the age of seventeen.
The pogroms and the incarceration of many more young Jews, sent Wilfrid back to the British Embassy on Nov. 17th, on behalf of the Reichsvertretung, to ask formally that Britain do all possible 'to accelerate the emigration of Jews from Germany, [and particularly those who had been driven from their homes – about ten to fifteen thousand – and install them in temporary camps whence they could be evacuated in due course to their country of destination'.
An Anglo-Jewish deputation led by Lord Samuel, which included Chaim Weizmann, Lionel de Rothschild and the Chief Rabbi of the UK, Joseph Herman Hertz, hastily put together a petition based on the cable and went to see the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. His initial response was non-committal, but the proposals were debated at a cabinet meeting the following day. No leading British Jew was prepared to risk visiting Germany, but here Wilfrid Israel's connections with the Quakers paid off. A delegation of Quakers headed by Bertha Bracey visited Germany to verify the willingness of German parents to part with their children. They met with Wilfrid Israel who introduced them to the heads of the Frauenbund, the German Jewish women's organisation with branches all over the country. Together, Quakers and Jews visited the Jewish communities all over the country and reported back to the British Home Office (in charge of immigration to Britain). One of the Quakers returned to London within days. His report made it clear that German Jewry wanted help for emigration, not relief on the spot.
On Nov. 21st, Lord Samuel led another delegation – this time made up of both – Jewish and non-Jewish representatives of groups concerned with refugees. – to Home Secretary Samuel Hoare. Samuel was accompanied by Lola Hahn Warburg, Wilfrid's friend and colleague in Youth Aliya, who had left Germany in the autumn, and was henceforth to be one of the chief workers for the child rescue in England, and Bertha Bracey, of the British Quakers, who brought Ben Greene, the Quaker who had returned to deliver the first-hand evidence. Greene testified to the plea of the German parents and their readiness to part with their children.
Speaking in the House of Commons that evening, Hoare announced that the government had agreed to the admission of refugee children, quoting Greene's evidence. Around this time, Wilfrid's previous and continued appeals were reinforced by the return to England of Sir Michael Bruce, who now impressed everyone in London with his first-hand information and knowledge. By this deceleration, removing the legal and official constraints, the Kindertransport could finally be launched.
After officially leaving Germany in mid-1939, Wilfrid Israel returned to Berlin to help Hannah Karminski and other members of the Frauenbund organize the last groups of German Jewish children of the Kindertransport. He left finally days before the outbreak of war. But there is more here than the omission of one name, important as that name may be. The history of the Kindertransport, as presented in several accounts, omits the role played by German Jewish organizations and their leaders, most of whom remained in Germany to help their co-religionists despite the fact that they themselves had visas and were able to escape. This included Wilfrid Israel's closest collaborators, Eppstein, Hirsch and Karminski, all of whom perished. The reason for this omission is the relative paucity of documentation, as the records of the Jewish organizations involved were mostly destroyed. It is also because the eyewitness accounts are those of the former Kindertransport children themselves, who were of course unaware of the negotiations which preceded their rescue. However even a glance at the newsreel reportage of the departure and arrival of the children indicates the meticulous preparation of the Kindertransport by its German Jewish organizers, and of the restraint of the parents: the children all carefully dressed, each with a small knapsack and suitcase, and equipped with tags around their necks indicating his or her identity.
In conclusion, the idea of the Kindertransport did not originate with Anglo Jewry; their deputations were the response to an appeal made by Wilfrid Israel as representative of the Jewish community in Germany.
The initiative, and the idea (undoubtedly linked to the British refusal to admit children to Palestine), was that of German Jewry itself.
As for Wilfrid Israel's activities on behalf of children and young people of which the Kindertransport was only one example: many years earlier, he was among the sponsors of Youth Aliya and on his last mission to wartime Europe, he drew up plans for the rescue of Jewish children in Vichy France.
Wilfrid Israel was a homosexual [12] but this was repressed and hidden, [13] and as such was also referred to in two books by Christopher Isherwood - Goodbye to Berlin (1939) and Christopher and His Kind published in 1976. Both books were later adapted to films.
On 26 March 1943, Israel left London for Lisbon, Portugal and spent the next two months distributing certificates of entry to British-ruled Palestine, and investigating the situation of Jews on the peninsula; during World War II the right-wing governments in Spain and Portugal had some sympathies with Nazi Germany but refused to hand over Jews to the Germans. Before Israel left the peninsula, he had also formulated a plan to rescue Jewish children from Vichy France – an enterprise partially carried out after his death. Israel was killed, aged 43, on 1 June 1943 when British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by eight German Junkers Ju 88s. [14]
A major memorial honouring Wilfrid Israel, and to all Jews who chose to risk their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, has been erected. The memorial is located adjacent to the ancient Levite City of Tel Yokneam, Israel. The 14' memorial, designed by noted Jerusalem sculptor Sam Philipe, was funded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.
The memorial has become the DeFacto first memorial in Israel to the Israel-Hamas Gaza War, Jews saving Jews. [15]
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 [16]
The Wilfrid Israel Museum in Kibbutz HaZore'a, Israel, is an archaeology and art museum dedicated to the memory of Wilfrid Israel. [17] The museum, which opened in 1951, houses Wilfrid's unique collection, to which many artefacts have been added over the years. The museum displays have 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.
In August 2020, burglars stole around 30 artefacts from the museum. [18]
A film by award-winning filmmaker Yonatan Nir and producer Noam Shalev premiered in Israel on 1 November 2016. [19] The film, The Essential Link: The Story of Wilfrid Israel , is inspired by the biography written by Naomi Shepherd. It tells the story of Wilfrid Israel's life-saving activities, his connections with the founders of Kibbutz HaZore'a and mostly focuses on the last ten years of his life. The film's website "The Essential Link: The Story of Wilfrid Israel" [20] provides more information about the person and the film and includes a link to its trailer.
Kristallnacht (German pronunciation:[kʁɪsˈtalnaχt]lit. 'crystal night') or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (German: Novemberpogrome, pronounced[noˈvɛm.bɐ.poˌɡʁoːmə] ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The euphemistic name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany.
The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. It was the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who perhaps hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more refugees, although he took pains to avoid stating that objective expressly. Historians have suggested that Roosevelt desired to deflect attention and criticism from American policy that severely limited the quota of refugees admitted to the United States.
Major Francis Edward Foley CMG was a British Secret Intelligence Service officer. As a passport control officer for the British Embassy in Berlin, Foley "bent the rules" and helped thousands of Jewish families escape from Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht and before the outbreak of the Second World War. He is officially recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust and as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Norbert Wollheim was a chartered accountant, tax advisor, previously a board member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and a functionary of other Jewish organisations.
The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 is a 1984 nonfiction book by David S. Wyman, former Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wyman was the chairman of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. The Abandonment of the Jews has been well received by most historians, and has won numerous prizes and widespread recognition, including a National Jewish Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, the Present Tense Literary Award, the Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Immigration History Society, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award."
The Nathan Israel Department Store was a department store in Berlin. The business was started in 1815 by Nathan Israel as a small second-hand store in the Molkenmarkt. By 1925, it employed over 2,000 people and was a member of the Berlin Stock Exchange, and in the 1930s was one of the largest retail establishments in Europe. Because it was owned by Jews, the store was boycotted by the German government when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. It was ransacked during the Kristallnacht in 1938 and then handed over to a non-Jewish family by the Nazis. The descendants of the original owners began to receive compensation for their losses after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The last owner and manager from the Israel family, Wilfrid Israel, was active in the rescue of thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and played a significant role in the initiation of the Kindertransport.
The One Thousand Children (OTC) is a designation, created in 2000, which is used to refer to the approximately 1,400 Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied or threatened European countries, and who were taken directly to the United States during the period 1934–1945. The phrase "One Thousand Children" only refers to those children who came unaccompanied and left their parents behind back in Europe. In nearly all cases, their parents were not able to escape with their children, because they could not get the necessary visas among other reasons. Later, nearly all these parents were murdered by the Nazis.
The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief formerly Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF) which currently operates under the name World Jewish Relief (WJR), is a British charitable organisation and the main Jewish overseas aid organisation in the United Kingdom.
Werner Otto von Hentig was a German Army Officer, adventurer and diplomat from Berlin. When still only a 25 year old lieutenant he was commissioned by the Kaiser to lead an expedition into the unknown and uncharted territories of Central Asia. The region associated with the political "Great Game" had its roots in Victorian rivalries between the local Great Powers: Russia and Britain. The small expedition party, travelling in extreme climatic conditions, suffered extraordinary privations with courage and equanimity. Surviving diary accounts of participants on both sides of the Great War bear witness to the unusual camaraderie and esprit de corps summoned by Hentig's outstanding qualities of leadership.
After Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933 and enacted policies that would culminate in the Holocaust, Jews began to escape German-occupied Europe and the United Kingdom was one of the destinations. Some came on transit visas, which meant that they stayed in Britain temporarily, while waiting to be accepted by another country. Others entered the country by having obtained employment or a guarantor, or via Kindertransport. There were about 70,000 Jewish refugees who were accepted into Britain by the start of World War II on 1 September 1939, and an additional 10,000 people who made it to Britain during the war.
Elpis Lodge was a hostel provided by Christadelphians for Jewish refugee boys in Birmingham, England, from 1940–1948.
Walter Bingham is a German-born British-Israeli journalist, actor, and businessman, as well as a Holocaust survivor and decorated World War II veteran. At age 99 in 2023, Bingham was Israel's oldest working journalist.
Between 1933 and 1945, a large number of Jews emigrated from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe. This exodus was triggered by the militaristic antisemitism perpetrated by the Nazi Party and by Germany's collaborators, ultimately culminating in the Holocaust. However, even before the genocide itself, which began during World War II, the Nazis had widely sponsored or enforced discriminatory practices—by legislation, in many cases—against Jewish residents, such as through the Nazi boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. Although Adolf Hitler and the German government were initially accepting of voluntary Jewish emigration from the country, it became difficult to find new host countries, particularly as the 1930s were marked by the Great Depression, as the number of Jewish migrants increased. Eventually, the Nazis forbade emigration; the Jews who remained in Germany or in German-occupied territory by this point were either murdered in the ghettos or relocated to be systematically exploited and murdered at dedicated concentration camps and extermination camps throughout the European continent.
Bertha Lilian Bracey (1893–1989) was an English Quaker teacher and aid worker who organised relief and sanctuary for Europeans affected by the turmoil before, during and after the Second World War. These included many Jewish children threatened by the Holocaust and rescued in the operation known as the Kindertransport. In 2010, she was recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust.
Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus were an American couple known for rescuing 50 Jewish children prior to the beginning of World War II.
Marie Schmolka was a Czechoslovak Jewish activist and social worker who helped political refugees and Jewish adults and children escape the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the lead-up to World War II. She was a member of WIZO and WILPF. She had previously helped refugees from Germany who fled to Czechoslovakia after the Nazi rise to power. Schmolka headed the newly founded Czechoslovak Refugee Committee, and also chaired local HICEM. In July 1938, she represented Czechoslovakia at the Évian conference.
The Essential Link: The Story of Wilfrid Israel is a documentary by Israeli director Yonatan Nir. The film, which is inspired by Naomi Shepherd's book Wilfrid Israel: German Jewry's Secret Ambassador, exposes the story of Wilfrid Israel - a wealthy Jewish businessman and owner of Berlin's largest department store in the 1930s, who was involved in the saving of tens of thousands of Jews and played a key role in the Kindertransport rescue operation. The film was produced by Highlight Films and premiered at the 2017 DocAviv International Film Festival. Among the major rescue efforts and operations, that are described in the film are the Kindertransport and the "Triangle" that beyond Wilfrid Israel included also Captain Frank Foley and Hubert Pollack, which saved according to estimations around 10,000 Jews.
Hubert Isaac Pollack was a German Jew whose clandestine activity prior to the Holocaust enabled him and his associates to save a large number of Jews. After his immigration to Israel, he served in the Haganah and the Israeli Defense Forces.
In Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin there appears a young man named Landauer of mixed Anglo-German-Jewish parentage, wealthy, exotic, small, oriental, dark-eyed -- a mixture of Beau Brummel and Hamlet against a Charlottenburg background. This was meant to be Wilfrid Israel, but the real Wilfrid Israel was tall, blond, blue-eyed. He owned a kimono, but otherwise there was nothing oriental about him. Generally speaking, there was no more in common between him and Landauer than between, say, Leopold Bloom and Leon Trotsky.