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B AGNES GRUNWALD-SPIER is a well-known presence at O many communal events. A long time representative on O the Board of Deputies of British Jews and a volunteer K for many causes, in her 60s she became a writer. She S tells JUDITH MIRZOEFF how it came about Descendants of rescued and rescuers join Agnes Grunwald-Spier (far right) Through Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s Ark and the film Schindler’s List based on it, we know that Oskar DOCUMENTING A Schindler saved over a thousand Jews in Poland from the camps during WW2. But mother went back to her flat, my father came Schindler was only one of many non-Jews home from forced labour in March and we N who were humane enough and brave moved illegally to Vienna in 1946 and stayed enough not to turn aside but to try and help. for a year. My earliest memory is of the train In her carefully documented history, The that took us from Vienna to England. My Other Schindlers – Why some people chose father brought with us some tins with D to save Jews in the Holocaust, Agnes chocolate powder in and a night light Grunwald-Spier tells about 30 rescuers, underneath. You poured water in and lit the both humble and influential, many of nightlight and after a time you got wonderful whose stories have only just come to light. hot chocolate. They were American Forces They include the popular singer, Vali surplus, I think. Rácz, known as the Hungarian Marlene “We settled first in Southgate, living Dietrich, who hid Jews behind a false panel with my mother’s sister who had signed the in a huge wardrobe; the American Charles papers to let us in to the country. We moved W Fawcett, who married six women in three to Sutton when my father, a manufacturing months (on paper), to get them out of the jeweller, got some work there, but he camps. Among diplomats who issued piles of committed suicide in 1955 when I was 10. R entry visas to help Jews escape was Aristides The old 11-plus did me proud and I got a de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in place at Sutton High School.” The next stage Bordeaux, who saved more than 10,000, to in Agnes’ education was an external London the detriment of his career. University degree, a BSc in economics, but I Agnes herself was one of those saved, she concentrated on her main loves, history, almost by chance. “One morning in and politics. The book acknowledges her Budapest during the autumn of 1944, an debt to her history teacher. unknown official in charge of deporting “I didn’t really know what I wanted to T Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz sent all the do, so the civil service seemed a good place women accompanied by children back to to go. As a young woman, I wasn’t very their homes. My mother, Leona Grunwald, ambitious – I’ve got more ambitious as I got was one of those women and I was a tiny older. I dealt mainly with the allocation of E baby in her arms,” she explains. “I have no radio frequencies, bizarrely, for eight years, means of knowing who that official was preparing for an international conference in and what his motives were … but it is 1971. In 1975 my then husband was made a chilling to think that but for his actions, on partner in his firm in the Birmingham office R arrival at Auschwitz, I would have been and we moved to a village in Worcestershire tossed into the fires with other babies – and lived there for 16 years. I really enjoyed murdered before I was aware of life.” village life. I started a local history society, I asked Agnes how long she remained in which still functions, and was elected to the S Europe and what were her earliest memories. Parish Council. Jewish people don’t always HEADER “We were liberated in January 1945, my understand that the Parish Council is the 48 JEWISH RENAISSANCE JULY 2010 “I took over as the Sheffield member me wonder what made people risk so much, of the Board of Deputies after volunteering and gave me the urge to find out more. I to go to London meetings in place of the discovered a range of motivations. Some existing Deputy who was finding it difficult rescuers, including Quakers, acted from to get to the meetings. I was elected as no religious conviction, some from one else seemed to want the job. humanitarian motives. Others simply tried to “It really opened the door to a lot of help Jews who had been neighbours for what I do now. I have one of the three years. These followed their hearts rather places for Deputies on the Holocaust than what they had been told to do. Memorial Day Trust. I’ve stopped being the However, most people were bystanders, Deputy for Sheffield, because I plan to indifferent to the fate of the Jews and often move to London, and I’m now the Deputy denying they knew what was happening for World Jewish Relief.” even when they lived close to the camps. In 1994 the Sheffield City Council was “That is why it is important to record bringing in the Anne Frank Exhibition, and these stories of heroism. Rwanda and Darfur Agnes felt that the Jewish community have shown that genocide is still tragically should be represented on the committee. “I happening.” wanted to be that representative because I How did she go about finding all these was a Holocaust survivor,” she remembers. people with stories to tell? “I advertised in “Through it I got to know a woman in the magazines of the Association of Jewish Sheffield University who was setting up an Refugees and the Council of Christians and THE RESCUERS MA in Holocaust Studies and signed up, Jews, and I found some stories in the Jewish which led eventually to the book. You Chronicle and in the Times. “ know, I’m not very good at standing on the Conferences on the Holocaust and the lowest form of local government, and has sidelines, I think it’s partly because I’m quite European Jewish communities also helped nothing to do with the Church. The village bossy by nature, some would say because I with publicity. Other cases were discovered was threatened with an extension of the know I’m right. I’ve got a logical mind and by remote chance, like that of an EU driver orbital motorway, the M42, so I set up a have been blessed with an old-fashioned in Brussels. On hearing what Agnes was Motorway Action Group. That was a major commodity which is common sense.” researching he revealed that his own mother undertaking, not resolved when we moved The book is published to coincide with had been saved from transportation to to Sheffield in 1991.” the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz when she was five because a Agnes still has a base in Sheffield camps, even though it was only finished in Nazi officer took pity on her – he had never although since her divorce she divides her January. “The issues still have great told this to anyone before. time between there and London. It was in relevance today”, says Agnes, “and I hope Everyone is said to have one book in Sheffield that she first became active in the the book makes people think about them. them. Will Agnes ever write another? “I do Jewish community. “We hadn’t been very “My direct inspiration was the feel that I shall get new information that involved in Jewish life, although we dissertation on Varian Fry that I wrote for might make part two; there are so many belonged to the Singers Hill synagogue. my MA, after finding out about him through unheard stories out there. I’d also like to After the warm neighbourliness of village a BBC documentary. Fry was then the only write a memoir one day.” life, I found Yorkshire people not American listed by Yad Vashem among the I was left with the impression that if particularly friendly but the Sheffield Jewish righteous among the nations for helping to this energetic woman believes that community was very welcoming. It was rescue Jews from the Holocaust. After something ought to be done, it won’t be long quite small and they were looking for people France fell in 1940 he agreed to go to before she gets on with it. to fill jobs. I was asked if I’d like to be Marseilles and rescue artists and writers for secretary of the Representative Council in America’s Emergency Relief Committee. The Other Schindlers – Why some people which the synagogues and other major He was given 200 visas, but ended up chose to save Jews in the Holocaust, bodies in major cities meet to discuss rescuing thousands of people, because of a Agnes Grunwald-Spier matters of concern and provide a contact love of literature and direct experience of the The History Press, £14.99, 226 pp, point for the wider community. I worked Nazis in Berlin in the ‘30s. His story made June 2010. particularly hard on the interfaith aspects. I had time because I was then a traditional housewife and mother and could go to daytime meetings. In future all organisations are going to suffer because this pool of keen middle class women with time to spare is not going to be there. “I also became a magistrate in Bromsgrove through sitting next to the Chairman of the neighbouring Bench in Kidderminster at a dinner.

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