Saved by a Righteous Among The Nations

"2 SS thugs guarded the border. They put a rifle against me. I said 'What do you want?' They took me to a room & said 'Put everything in your pocket on the table.' I had a photo from a girlfriend.
'Ah' he said, 'That's not a Jewish girlfriend. That is an Aryan madchen.”
I said 'No.'
What do you think he did? Put a pistol at my head: 'I'll count to 10 & if you don’t say by 10 she's an Aryan, you are dead.'
I said 'Are you mad? She's Jewish.'
'You heard what I said. 1, 2…'
"By 8 the door opened. The inspector came in. He said 'Put it down'.
He said 'He's got an Aryan madchen there.'
I said 'Her name is so & so & she's Jewish.'
So he said to that Nazi 'You heard what he said. What else do you want? She's Jewish, that is it.'
He said 'I can’t let you past now, you have to stay the night in prison.'
They took a taxi, drove me back to Treia, put me in prison for 4 days, I ate 1 piece of bread & drank 1 cup of water. After 4 days I was ordered out downstairs & there was a fellow, 'Heil Hitler. Are you Jewish? Sit down. Tell me your life story from the moment you were born until you sit down here.' I told him what I know. The door opened, a fellow comes in: 'Tomorrow a transport is going to Dachau, put him in.' He left.
I said 'If I leave the country in a normal way, wouldn’t that be better than sending me to Dachau?'
He said 'Have you got a passport?'
I said yes.
'Right, go back to Berlin, report to the Gestapo, get your visa for wherever you want to go to & then get a train from the station to Holland.”
I said 'Thank you very much.'
'And don’t tell them I let you go, just get out of here quietly.
Frank went to the British embassy in Berlin.
"There was an inspector, he was well known [probably Frank Foley]. I told him what happened to me. He said: 'Give me your passport. OK'. That man, he did so many good things. Whenever he was on duty there wasn’t one who was sent out without a visa."

She [Truus Wijsmuller, who had come to Vienna to negotiate with Adolf Eichmann to allow the Kindertransport release of 600 children after the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht)] said: ‘I’ve come to take 600 children out of Vienna.’ ‘When do you want to take them?’ She said: ‘Tomorrow if I can.’ ‘Right. You will take them on Saturday.’ The choice of inflicting pain on orthodox parents that the children should travel on Saturday–dafke [on purpose]–was something very, very Eichmann-y. The joke is he didn’t know that there is a very clear rule: For the saving of life, the rules of Shabbat are set aside. ‘Pikuah nefesch tochei Shabbat’. Anyhow, OK, Saturday. I knew nothing except that suddenly a whole load of new clothes appeared, clothes I’d never seen: suit, trousers, new underwear, shirts, everything. All new. And there we are. And, suddenly, I knew that I was going.

I felt terribly guilty in these surroundings. The warmth, the clean. I had food to eat. I could wash. I had warm water. I could bathe. I mean all these things that people forgot what it’s like in that ghetto. The horror.

Well I, I left to go to the ORT school in the morning and the streets were empty and I was told, “The Germans have invaded us.” Amsterdam was lucky. Because Rotterdam was completely destroyed. You know. Amsterdam was just two bombs. So when I got to the ORT School they said, the Germans have invaded us, we can’t teach you anymore. Because – now got home. So I went back to the orphanage. After five days we were waiting what was going to happen to us. We were very anxious to hear reports of the German invasion, you know? And, and we heard that the Dutch were completely unprepared. They hoped to become …Or to stay neutral as they stayed neutral in the First World War. Completely unprepared. So the Germans invaded quickly and May 15th then we were told, “Take your pyjamas and your best clothes, and leave [ inaudible] and on the Lijnbaansgracht in Amsterdam there were three buses ready. So we boarded the buses. And Truus Wijsmuller was there to see us and took us to the port of Ijmuiden which is the Dutch port on the North Sea. And she persuaded this captain of a cargo boat, called the “Bodegraven”. I’ve got a photograph of that too, to take us away, quickly. Which he did. The recollection of people who were with us, remembered that she left her handbag on board, but went back, wouldn’t come with us. Although she had an opportunity to go to England as well on the boat. She refused. And on my last impression of leaving is firstly were British soldiers were landing, to fight the Germans. And the last, the picture too of the harbour of Amsterdam. The Dutch Shell had big oil tanks there which the Dutch set on fire, because they didn’t want the oil to go into the German hands. So the smoke of these big oil refineries saw us off as we left. Soon after we had left the harbour, some German fighter planes came over. Luckily they had no bombs. They would have gladly bombed us, sank the ship. So I dived on the rescue boats and I wasn’t hit by the machine guns fortunately. Now the journey was… traumatic because we never knew what was going to happen, where we were going. No idea. And the sad part was an example of intolerance, because the Dutch crew was willing to give us some food. And all the orthodox people who were on the boat said, No, it’s not kosher; you can’t eat it. So for the days from leaving Holland until landing in Liverpool we had… dog’s biscuits and water, you know. We didn’t starve but the great under-, the great…understood, realised intolerance, you know, of the very orthodox not, not, not rising to the situation.

I’ve read quite a bit about her, this Truus Wijsmuller-Meijer. She was an extraordinarily refined woman. Aristocratic woman. And the children loved her dearly. And they wanted very much, you know as long as she was with them, you know, the children were - felt that it was their mother, you know, who was really travelling with them. And she also felt that she must reassure the children. So as a consequence, she left in her memoirs she says this. She left her handbag when she boarded the ship, she took her handbag and she left it on the board that the children should see. “I’m leaving the handbag. I’m with you here of course. I’ve still got a few things to do.