The Jewish Standard

From the Reich to the Raj | The Jewish Standard http://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/from-the-reich-to-the-raj/ THE JEWISH STANDARD | jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com From the Reich to the Raj Uncovering the story of German refugees in India BY MEYLEKH VISWANATH April 13, 2017, 11:52 am Introduction Many people know the story of how large numbers of Jews fleeing Hitler’s henchmen found refuge in Shanghai or in Bukhara. Few, however, know that India, too, provided refuge for many Jews during the Second World War. Dr. Margit Franz of the University of Graz, who recently presented her work at a conference in New Delhi on the art, culture and heritage of the Jews of India, called Sherei Hodu, is working to bring India into the field of exile studies. India, she says, has not been recognized as a host country for exiles, although it has provided refuge for refugees over many centuries. Those refugees include the Jews who came to India at various times in its history (the Cochini Jews and the Bnei Israel) and the Parsees. The Jews probably came as early as 2,000 years ago (though the dating is unclear), while the Parsees fled Iran and Islam about 1,000 years ago. But Dr. Franz is not talking about those groups. Her specialty is the German-speaking refugees who escaped to India. Professor Anil Bhatti and Professor Johannes Voigt published their pathbreaking study, “Jewish Exile in India 1933-1945,” in 1999. Then, conventional wisdom was that there had been only about 1,000 Jewish World War II refugees in India. However, building upon the work of Professor Bhatti and Professor Shalva Weil, Dr. Franz has concluded that there were at least about 5,000 Jewish refugees who made their home in India during the war years. It is not easy to count all those who came to India, Dr. Franz says. For one thing, not all Jewish refugees identified themselves in that way; for another, India was not a single country in those days. Not only was there British India, there were many princely states as well. But through painstaking research, however, Dr. Franz has tracked many of those Jews who came to India to find asylum. How the refugees got to India Most of the people who sought refuge in India had exceptional skills, Dr. Franz says. India had a large population of unskilled people so there was no room for more unskilled hands. People who had special skills were more likely to obtain visas. Of course, it was the British authorities who decided who would get visas and who would not. There also were Indian groups who did not want to allow Jewish refugees into India. Dr. Shimon Lev, who did comparative research on Indian and Zionist national movements at Hebrew University 1 von 7 16.05.17 18:27 From the Reich to the Raj | The Jewish Standard http://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/from-the-reich-to-the-raj/ (and who also spoke at the New Delhi conference) points to Subhash Chandra Bose, an Indian freedom fighter who was president of the Indian National Congress from 1897 to 1945. In 1938, Bose blocked the passage of a resolution sponsored by Jawaharlal Nehru, who later became India’s first prime minister, to welcome Jewish refugees “who could contribute to India’s progress.” That stipulation — that immigrants had to contribute to India’s progress — most likely was a concession to get the resolution passed; at other times Nehru fought hard to obtain visas for Jewish refugees on humanitarian grounds. All of this, further, happened before the extent of the Holocaust had become known. Once the war had started, though, it was the British who made the decisions. Indians’ views did not matter much to them. Rulers of princely states nominally were able to make their own decisions, but in fact, the British had to approve them. The British controlled the princely states’ foreign policy, so no Indian princely state controlled any port. As a result, at the very least, a British transit visa was required for entry into India. German Jewish refugees in India were interned together with German Nazis, Dr. Franz learned. There were many Germans in Bombay and Calcutta, so Jews were put in the intolerable situation of sharing close quarters with their erstwhile tormentors. With the beginning of the war, in September 1939, all Germans were considered enemy aliens, she said. In October, the British set up a committee to distinguish between true refugees and Nazi spies. Most of the refugees were released by the end of 1939, but there was a second wave of internment in May and June 1940, when Hitler’s attacks in Europe were particularly successful. Women refugees, Dr. Franz noted, were in a very peculiar position in India. In other countries, such as in Britain, they got jobs as housekeepers, tailors, and teachers. There were few such jobs available for women in India, although there were some teaching jobs. Mostly, though, women who worked had special skills, and even those jobs were limited mainly to Bombay and Calcutta. One woman, Lotte Eisenstaedt, worked for the Maharaja of Bikaner as a specialist on children’s welfare. Another woman set up a factory to manufacture bras. It employed many people. None of this was easy. When the war started, the British shut down all German businesses, including large companies like Siemens, AGFA, Kores, Scholl, and IG Farben, which mainly employed Nazis. But after 1940, the British allowed legitimate refugees to restart their businesses. Kindertransports to India India also figured in two different Kindertransports. The Teheran Children was a group of about 1,000 Polish Jewish children, mainly orphans, who fled first to the Soviet Union and then were permitted to travel to Teheran, along with some 116,000 Christian Poles. From Teheran, they went by land to the Persian Gulf and thence to Karachi, Pakistan (which then was India) and on to the Egyptian city of Suez. The children then crossed the Sinai Desert by train and arrived at the Atlit refugee camp in northern Palestine in February 1943. The second group of children, which again consisted mainly of Polish Christians, actually spent a fair amount of time in India. This group of about 1,000 children travelled overland in two convoys from the Soviet Union through Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and thence to India proper. 2 von 7 16.05.17 18:27 From the Reich to the Raj | The Jewish Standard http://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/from-the-reich-to-the-raj/ Both these groups were expelled from the Soviet Union, and if it had not been for the Kindertransports, may have been shipped to Siberia, as were other Polish refugees to the Soviet Union, both Jews and non-Jews. These Polish children were welcomed in two different camps around October 1942. One was set up by the Maharaja Jam Saheb of Nawanagar at Balichadi, about 500 miles northwest of Bombay. The other, established by the Maharaja of Kolhapur, was at Valivade, about 240 miles southeast of Bombay. Dr. Anuradha Bhattacharjee told these children’s stories in “The Second Homeland: Polish Refugees in India,” published in 2012. Twelve of the Balachadi contingent were Jewish children. The Jewish Agency ultimately brought them to Haifa; they arrived on April 24, 1943. Rabbi Elias Shor chaperoned them from Mumbai to Israel. A June 27, 2012 JTA article reports a fascinating interview with Zygmunt Mandel, one of these 12 children. The Jewish Agency lists the names of the 11 other children: Edmund Erlich, Paula Gilert, Avraham Magnushever, Fima Kaufman, Cyla Rozengarten and the siblings Ilona and Janusz Goldlost, Roza and Rachel Hoch, and Eliza and Maria Spalter. Who were the refugee Jews? Among the Jews were some — mainly Austrians — who were famous in their own fields, or developed new areas of expertise in India. Many of them were in the arts. Elise Braun worked on promoting the Montessori approach in music and Liesl Stary was a Viennese piano virtuoso. Walter Kaufmann was a composer, conductor, musicologist, and educator. Born in Karlsbad, Bohemia, he wrote books on the ragas of North India and of South India. Hilde Boman-Behram, née Holger, established the School of Art for Modern Movement in Fort, Bombay, and was an expressionist dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher. Rudolf von Leyden was a progressive art promoter, collector, and critic, and a member of the prestigious Lalit Kala Academy. He also organized exhibitions and published papers about ganjifa, a variety of Indian playing cards that has 96 cards in eight suits of 12 cards each. Sometimes the cards are made of precious materials, such as ivory, mother-of-pearl, or tortoise shell, sometimes they are encrusted with jewels, and sometimes they are painted exquisitely. Kitty Shiva Rao, née Verständig, and Dr. Ernst Cohn-Wiener also were involved with the arts. She, along with noted Indian cultural activist Pupul Jayakar, launched a national program for handicrafts and handloom development in 1952 and was vice president of the “All India Handicrafts Board.” Ernst Cohn-Wiener, who taught art history in Berlin until the Nazis forced him out in 1933, first went to England and then to India, where the maharaja of Baroda appointed him the director of the Baroda Museum and Picture Gallery. He also was the maharaja’s personal art consultant from 1934 to1939. Several of the Jewish refugees were architects. Viktor Lurje was a consulting architect of the maharaja of Jodhpur. Hans Glas, a Viennese architect, went to Calcutta in 1938 and was befriended by the dancer Hilde Holger. Otto Konigsberger, a nephew of the famous physicist Max Born, was appointed chief architect and planner to Mysore state in 1939.

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