Everyone knows the story of Oskar Schindler from Steven Spielberg\u2019s 1993 Academy Award-winning masterpiece, \u201cSchindler\u2019s List.\u201d The gentile German industrialist famously saved an estimated 1,200 Jewish employees during the horrors of World War II,<\/p>\n
etching his name permanently into the global conscience and receiving rightful, widespread celebration for his immense courage.<\/p>\n
Yet, history often overlooks another figure who quietly achieved an exponentially greater rescue effort. Another man saved nearly ten times as many Jewish lives as Schindler, operating entirely in the shadows without ever having a major Hollywood motion picture made about his extraordinary life. In fact, the vast majority of people today have never even heard his name. <\/p>\n
There are several reasons for this historical obscurity. He operated in deep clandestinity, was a gay socialist and a reluctant Zionist, and did not have a popular novel written that thrust his name into the public mainstream. Despite these factors, he was a Jewish humanitarian who profoundly altered the course of thousands of lives and deserves monumental recognition. His name was Wilfrid Israel.<\/p>\n
Wilfrid was born in London\u2014a circumstance of birth that granted him a protected status in pre-World War II Germany\u2014into a prominent, wealthy family that owned Berlin\u2019s most popular and prestigious department store, Nathan Israel. Growing up at the intersection of British citizenship and German high society, Wilfrid was uniquely positioned to navigate the treacherous political landscape that began to take shape in Europe during the early decades of the twentieth century. <\/p>\n
The turning point for Wilfrid, much like for millions of European Jews, came during the horrific events of Kristallnacht in November 1938. Across Germany, Nazi thugs and ordinary citizens brutally attacked Jewish people, ransacked homes, and destroyed businesses, including his family\u2019s iconic department store. In the wake of this devastating state-sponsored pogrom, Wilfrid was approached by his friend Chaim Weizmann, the visionary leader who would later become the first president of Israel. Weizmann, who had helped establish the British Mandate of Palestine for Jewish immigrants after World War I, convinced Wilfrid of the absolute urgency and necessity of facilitating the mass emigration of German Jews to Palestine to save them from certain destruction.<\/p>\n
Driven to action, Wilfrid immediately leveraged his extraordinary connections and sharp intellect. He penned a compelling, urgent letter to the British Prime Minister detailing the immediate mortal peril facing European Jews. The advocacy struck a chord within the British political establishment, leading the Home Secretary to stand up in Parliament and call for the establishment of an unprecedented humanitarian program to repatriate Jewish children from the continent. <\/p>\n
The British government ultimately agreed to take in 5,000 unaccompanied young emigres. This initiative blossomed into the historic Kindertransport, which ultimately saved roughly 10,000 Jewish children from the Nazi death machine in Europe. It was an astonishing triumph of quiet diplomacy, saving lives on a massive scale.<\/p>\n
Yet, despite his monumental achievements, why has virtually no one heard the story of Wilfrid Israel\u2014a trusted friend to heavyweights like Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion, and even Albert Einstein? The answer lies largely in Wilfrid\u2019s own deliberate choices. He harbored deep, rational fears that his tireless clandestine work to extricate Jews from concentration camps would severely antagonize Adolf Hitler and the Nazi high command if it were ever to become celebrated or widely known. <\/p>\n
Wilfrid was painfully aware of the ultimate, horrific threat that the concentration camps posed long before most of the international community grasped the full scope of the genocide, actively warning of total extermination years in advance. He was simply not looking for personal glory, fame, or historical acclaim. Furthermore, though he was a prominent society figure in Berlin and widely considered to be among the country\u2019s wealthiest men, he was secretly a gay socialist in a regime that systematically persecuted homosexuals and political dissidents. He actively requested that his friends and associates avoid keeping written records about him or his radical politics, and he fiercely insisted that they never publicize his good deeds.<\/p>\n
Despite his insistence on secrecy, his impact rippled through the cultural and artistic circles of his time. His close friend Christopher Isherwood, who unlike Wilfrid lived openly as a gay man, immortalized elements of Wilfrid in his semi-autobiographical literary work, \u201cThe Berlin Stories,\u201d which later famously inspired the iconic musical and film \u201cCabaret.\u201d In Isherwood\u2019s text, Wilfrid was fictionalized as the character \u201cBernhard Landauer,\u201d who is portrayed with a certain coldness. Remarkably, Wilfrid approved of the literary character anyway. <\/p>\n
That very book subsequently inspired a young writer to seek out and befriend Wilfrid. That young man, Peter Vansittart, and Wilfrid eventually became a couple. Vansittart went on to forge a brilliant literary career, authoring dozens of books and earning a reputation as one of England\u2019s finest writers of historical fiction. For his massive contribution to literature, Vansittart received an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008, the same year he passed away.<\/p>\n
As the political climate in Germany deteriorated past the point of no return, concerned friends repeatedly warned Wilfrid that he was in grave, immediate danger simply by remaining in Berlin. Despite enduring numerous arrests and brutal physical beatings by the Gestapo, he steadfastly refused to abandon his post, staying behind to coordinate rescue operations and exhaust his family fortune to fund continuous waves of Jewish emigration. <\/p>\n
Only when Great Britain and Germany were clearly and unequivocally headed for outright war, and with his family\u2019s immense financial resources nearly completely depleted from financing rescue efforts, did he finally return to London. Once in the British capital, he directed critical relief efforts, assisting refugees in landing safely in neutral countries or successfully escaping from Nazi-occupied territories. <\/p>\n
His vital mission came to a tragic and abrupt end on June 1, 1943. After visiting a nearby refugee camp for displaced Jews, Wilfrid boarded a civilian Dutch Airlines flight departing from Lisbon. Tragically, the German Luftwaffe tracked the civilian plane into the Bay of Biscay and ruthlessly shot it down, killing every single soul on board. No wreckage of the aircraft has ever been recovered. Wilfrid Israel was just 43 years old.<\/p>\n
His legacy, however, refused to die with him in the icy waters of the Atlantic. The socialist agricultural collectives that he had helped finance and establish in Palestine ultimately evolved into the HaZore\u2019a kibbutz. A few years later, his surviving friends and colleagues helped establish the modern state of Israel in 1948. Today, the Wilfrid Israel Museum\u2014which houses the remarkable collection of fine artworks he owned that miraculously survived the devastation of the Second World War\u2014stands proudly on that very kibbutz.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on his selfless, relentless existence and the burdens he carried, Wilfrid once posed a poignant, rhetorical question to himself and those around him: \u201cShould I shed tears of bitterness that \u2018great happiness\u2019 has not been granted me?\u201d <\/p>\n
Answering his own query with characteristic humility and quiet dignity, he concluded, \u201cAll I know is that my life, for myself and others, has not remained empty.\u201d <\/p>\n
Now, decades after his tragic and untimely death, that remarkable, self-effacing life of quiet heroism is finally receiving the enduring remembrance it has always deserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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