Francis Max Steiner

Baptised [Catholic] at birth, what’s more. And- and of course I wasn’t the only one. There were a number of what you might call ‘non-Aryan’ ...boys in the school. ...And the other thing about this particular primary school was, that quite a lot of us more as a group went on to the Schotten. So that when we had our last class reunion, in 2010... some of us had been together not only since the beginning of grammar school in 1932, but since our first day at primary school in 1928.

And it was the only school [Schottengymnasium] in Austria, and perhaps greater Germany, which when the Nazis came, did not discriminate. I mean in all other schools in Vienna, Jewish and non-Aryan boys were grouped together in separate groups and eventually concentrated in separate Jewish schools. When the Nazi authorities asked all schools, including the Schotten, what Jewish boys they had, the Schotten with a perfectly straight face, replied, “[You see] the question didn’t arise, because they’d only got Catholic boys.” ...My- everybody knew that those of us that were affected, were well-known in the sch- I mean with... the- the spirit of the locality was that nobody, even Nazis in the school, didn’t give the show away. In the year above me, was the son of a Nazi Gauleiter of Austria, young Seyss-Inquart, whose father was hanged as a war criminal after Nuremberg. He must have known perfectly well who we were, but he too, in the spirit of the school, he kept his mouth shut. And so we were never given away. And we had a ...great deal of reason to be grateful for the school. Because after the Nazis closed the school down...In July ’38. It closed down all Catholic schools... on the grounds expressly that it was the business of the state to educate the young. That was actually given as the reason for closing the school down, and- and others like it.

Now the odd thing is, which is relevant to this project, is that the Viennese - the population of Vienna - did not really behave terribly well after the Nazi takeover. I know Churchill said, “We can never forget in these islands that Austria was the first victim of Nazi aggression.” That is actually true, though most English Jews deny that. It is true. Austria was the- after all we’d been under siege for five years. ...The persecution of Austria by, by its big neighbour next door throughout the 30s cannot be denied. But it is equally true that in 1938 there must have been some kind of- something snapped in the psychology of the locals. Because in early ’38, we could still hope that the- the independent Austria would win the plebiscite ...against Germany. And then on the 13th of March some-something snapped. I can remember the suddenness of it. Because... it’s on the evening, but not the 13th, on the Friday that the German Army marched in. There’d still been street- anti-Nazi street demonstrations that afternoon. And the same late afternoon or early evening, we saw a group of Nazis walking past a group of policemen, and shouting, “Heil Deutsche Wache” to which the policemen replied in chorus, “Heil”. Well... At which one of the Nazis turned to the other and said, “You see what whores they are. Two hours ago they beat us with rubber truncheons. And now they shout Heil.” You can see how some- something must have snapped psychologically. Because the population of Vienna appeared to have turned nasty on one five minutes. Of course it wasn’t the whole population of Vienna, far from it. ...And the seeds of resistance were in fact, which is generally forgotten, that very day. But that’s another story.

So I trooped off to the Quaker office and discovered about the Kindertransport... which of course all the English religious communities were represented. The non-Jewish things - activities - were centralised by the Quakers who had an office in Vienna. And there, the first person I met was a beautiful young woman called Barbara Ward, later Lady Jackson of Glossop [Lodsworth], editor of the Economist... eventually. But she was there representing some Catholic refugee organisation. ...And I had no idea who she was, but I mean except here was an English Catholic representing something to do with refugee aid. And I was interviewed, and after that inevitably my memory goes blank. But I mean... this was... early November or mid-November 1938. And the first Kindertransport train left less than a month later. It is quite incredible, how quickly and efficiently the thing was organised. It may have had something to do with the fact that the home secretary of the day, Sir Samuel Hoare, was a Quaker. I think that might- because otherwise, I mean- Kristallnacht was on the 9th of November, the first Kindertransport train left Berlin I believe on the 2nd of December. So squaring the British government, squaring the British Parliament, making the arrangements with the Nazi authorities – all that inside one month. It is barely believable, but it did happen.

Little did I ex- expect to spend my life as a counterfeit Anglo-Saxon, married into the most English of English family settings possible. ...Almost the second Senior member of the Reform Club in Pall Mall, than which nothing more establishment. Little did I expect to end up with a Papal Knighthood.