The Train to Crystal City: FDR's Secret Prisoner Exchange (31 page)

Irene’s journey across the Mediterranean to the port of Philippeville, a French colony formerly under the control of the Vichy regime located in the northeastern part of Algeria, took less than thirty hours. As the
Città de Alessandria
, the Italian freighter, neared the Algerian port, Irene watched seagulls dive overhead and blue water strike rocks near the shoreline. Even though it was still winter, the air was warm as sunshine poured from the sky.

At the dock, Irene was part of a group of fewer than one hundred Jews from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who were met by British representatives from Camp Jeanne d’Arc, a displaced-persons camp in Philippeville that was operated by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. The mission of the UNRRA was to provide assistance to European nations at the end of the war and to help refugees such as Irene who were liberated from Bergen-Belsen and other concentration camps.

The view outside the window of the bus that took Irene to the camp was of a healthier, brighter world than any she had seen since the dark days following the arrest of her family by the Nazis in Amsterdam in June 1943. Ahead of her were grassy hills with high ridges on both the east and west side of the roaring sea. Small houses, painted soothing shades of white and blue, rose gradually up the knolls. Among the houses were a few towering office buildings with red roofs. The road to the camp in Philippeville was lined
with palms and a variety of fruit trees. Children zigzagged in happy packs on either side.

Despite the intense light and the beauty of surroundings, Irene’s mind was fixed on the perils of the war. Even though she was now in Philippeville, the troubles in Europe did not feel far away.
On the other side of the Mediterranean, her mother, Gertrude, and her brother, Werner, remained in a private hospital at St. Gallen, Switzerland. When last Irene saw her mother, Gertrude was near death. Was her mother conscious now, and if so, how was she bearing the uncertainty of not hearing any word from Irene? When would the war finally be over, and how would she be reunited with her brother and mother? All of these questions stirred squalls of sadness within Irene.

She’d never before been on her own. The task of learning to live without her family was so dark and heavy that she was in no mood to celebrate the sublime arrival of warm weather in early February in Philippeville. While she was warm and safe, she knew her mother and brother were still recuperating from serious injuries, their fates unknown.

The camp in Philippeville had a series of metal military barracks with rounded metal tops. While other children went with their parents to separate barracks, Irene was taken to a barrack for children who did not have parents or whose parents were too sick to take care of them. In other words, she was assigned to an orphans’ barrack. Many of the parents of those children were desperately ill and were taken to a camp hospital. A variety of nationalities of UNRRA nurses and doctors worked in the hospital.

Irene was still skin and bones and pallid in contrast to the tanned British and American staff in the camp. “A British man was the director of the camp,” recalled Irene. “They were very nice and showed a great deal of interest in me. I ate three meals a day in a dining room. Compared to the hell of Bergen-Belsen, it wasn’t that bad, except I was so worried about my mother and my brother. I struggled to regain my strength and to keep going.”

For Irene and the other children in camp, the days passed without
structure. Every day they made their way to the beach and swam in the warm waters. Without the sight of Nazi arms raised in salute or the diet of bitter bread and watery soup, they slowly began to adapt to this sanctuary. They ate fresh fruit and vegetables and walked on paths lined with flowers.

But for Irene there was little peace. Although the UNRRA staff helped her send messages to her mother and brother in St. Gallen, these went unanswered. In the meantime, other unaccompanied refugee children in the barrack had successfully been reunited with their parents in small family units at the camp. Finally, only Irene and one other child, a seven-year-old boy from Poland named Vitek, were left in the orphans’ barrack.

Though Irene felt sisterly toward Vitek, he was extremely troubled. Relief workers told Irene that Nazi guards had shot both of Vitek’s parents in front of his eyes. Ugly, repetitive flashes of those deaths haunted Vitek while he was awake. At night in the barrack, Vitek flailed in his bed, unable to find rest. Irene rocked him until he dropped into sleep. Finally, a Polish family took him in and he was transferred.

Shortly after Vitek left the barrack, a German woman who was a friend of Irene’s mother in Bergen-Belsen agreed that Irene could join her family. The woman and her husband had two children, a boy and a girl, and Irene stayed with them as she continued to await word from her own mother and brother.

Finally in March, a month after her arrival, Irene received word that both her mother and brother were alive in St. Gallen. She was extremely relieved, but while her brother’s foot had healed, her mother was still critical. Both would have to stay in St. Gallen. The arrival of the first letter pulled Irene out of her slump, and she was soon corresponding regularly with her mother and brother. Irene took comfort in knowing that her mother was resting on clean sheets, under the care of nurses, and that she ate three good meals a day. However, in Philippeville, surrounded by the water and the seaside flora, Irene felt as lonely as a castaway.

By letters, they decided that the three of them—Gertrude, Werner, and Irene—would attempt to immigrate to the United States. Her mother had a cousin, Rose Kaplan, who’d gone to the United States from Germany in the 1930s. Rose and her husband, Hugo, owned a small carpet-cleaning business in New York and agreed to sponsor Irene and provide for her support. Without their sponsorship, Irene would not be considered for a visa. Relief workers in the camp set the process in motion. It took much longer than Irene had imagined.

One of the gravely ill patients in the Philippeville camp hospital was forty-three-year-old Sara Wolf, known by her friends and family by her Dutch name, Lien. Before the war, Irene’s family and the Wolfs had known each other well in Amsterdam in the small, close-knit Jewish quarter. The Wolfs had two children, Jacob, pronounced Jaap by his Dutch family, and his sister, Marie, who was known as Mieke. The Wolf children were similar in ages to Werner and Irene. In Amsterdam, Werner and Jacob had attended the same school, and Marie, like Irene, had been acquainted with Anne Frank.

The path the two families had followed to Philippeville was also parallel. Both families were arrested in the summer of 1943, but a crucial difference between the legal statuses of the two families was that Henri Wolf, the father of Jacob and Marie, held an American birth certificate and American passport. Henri’s parents had emigrated from Holland to New York in the late 1890s; Henri was born in Brooklyn in 1898.

At the time of his birth, his mother missed her family and preferred the tranquil environment of Holland to the chaotic life in New York. Henri’s father did not want to return, which provoked a conflict, but in time Henri’s father acquiesced to his wife’s wishes and the family moved to Holland. He was careful to make sure that his own son, Henri, had an American birth certificate and an American passport in case Henri wanted to return to America.

When Henri was eight years old, he contracted a virus that left him disabled. “He became a dwarf,” recalled Jacob, his son. “He
stayed the same height that he was at eight for the rest of his life—never more than just over four feet tall.” Despite his disability, Henri excelled in school and became a language teacher, offering instruction in French, German, and English. In Holland, he married Lien, and they had two children—Jacob in 1929 and Mieke in 1933. After the children were born, Henri made sure that they, too, acquired American citizenship. As the children of an American-born father, both children secured certificates of citizenship and American passports.

Like the Hasenberg family, the Wolfs, despite their papers, were crammed into a cattle car in June 1943 and transported to Westerbork, the transit camp for all the Jews from the Netherlands. Prior to his arrest, Henri had attempted to use his American passport and those of his children to get his family out of Amsterdam and back to the United States. By then, all requests for travel to America were denied because of visa restrictions. “The atmosphere of hate was such that the Germans took a dim view of our passports,” said Jacob. “They didn’t want any Jews to escape so they ignored our passports.” Instead of sending the Wolf family to Auschwitz, the German authorities sent them to Bergen-Belsen, where they were classified as possible exchange Jews. They left Bergen-Belsen on the same train as Irene’s family.

Jacob remembers the moment that the train from Bergen-Belsen clattered across the border from Konstanz, Germany, into the northeast corner of Switzerland and pulled into the station at Kruezlingen.
Two large trains were parked side by side in the station. One train was filled with German POWs and the group from Crystal City, including the Eiserlohs, Ingrid’s family. The other was packed with sick and dispirited Jews from Bergen-Belsen, including the Wolfs and Irene, her mother, and brother. Her father, John, had secured his family’s freedom but died before making the short walk into freedom between those two trains.

The moods of the passengers on board the opposing trains were quite different. The Germans and German Americans, including
Ingrid and her siblings, were being deported from their home country into a war-torn and, for most, alien environment. In contrast, the Jewish families from Bergen-Belsen were being transported from imminent death to freedom and plenty. In the Eiserloh train, the people were anxious and afraid. When Jacob disembarked from the train from Bergen-Belsen and boarded the train from Kruezlingen to Marseille, he heard jubilant shouts from the crew and incoming passengers. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” they shouted. Relief workers covered Jacob’s shivering body with warm blankets. His younger sister was blanketed as well. His mother, who had developed cancer in Bergen-Belsen, was so ill she could barely walk. Medical personnel rushed to take care of her. His father was handed a cup of strong, hot coffee. Henri and the two children settled into their seats in the Pullman car.

On the other side of the track, Jacob heard repeated shouts of “Heil Hitler!” from the passengers inside the train headed to Germany, including German POWs and civilians from Crystal City. He was a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy who since his deportation from Amsterdam had kept his eyes down and his fears squeezed into a tight ball. But at that moment the dreaded phrase
Heil Hitler
no longer held any power over Jacob. “I understood that my life was being saved,” Jacob recalled. “At long last, I felt safe.”

When the train arrived in Marseille, Jacob’s momentary sense of safety was marred by a surprise turn of events. In the port stood the gleaming-white
Gripsholm
, the Swedish liner. Jacob’s family joined the line of American prisoners of war and civilians who boarded the ship of freedom. On deck waiters served champagne. Buffet tables spread with poultry and fish dishes, savory vegetables, and sweet desserts waited in the banquet room.

While Jacob’s family awaited their assignments, a pair of officials from the American consulate approached Henri and explained that he and his two children were welcome to stay on board and sail to America. All three of their passports were in order. But Sara, a Dutch citizen, would have to stay behind and be transported to the displaced-persons camp in Philippeville. She couldn’t get an American visa because of the restrictions.

Jacob’s eyes fixed on his father’s tired face. Henri seemed to be concentrating all of his senses in an effort to weigh the unbearable choice that faced him. “You want me to leave my sick wife behind?” asked Henri, his voice a crackle of panic. “No, no, no. I can’t do that.”

As a dwarf, Henri routinely attracted attention. People stared at his shriveled legs and sharp bones. On that day, Jacob, who was five feet nine inches tall, towered over Henri by almost two feet. He watched his father straighten his spine and heard him give officials his answer, delivered in perfect English: “Take us all to Philippeville.”

Officials escorted the whole family off the ship bound for America and they boarded the Italian freighter, the same ship that Irene was on. Upon arrival, they joined Irene at the camp in Philippeville. Jacob’s mother was immediately taken to the camp hospital. Doctors explained to Henri that the renal cancer had spread and they could do nothing. Sara, forty-three years old, forcibly extracted by the Nazis from her home in Amsterdam, who had struggled to survive and keep her children alive in a concentration camp, was now incapacitated in a hospital bed in a distant country. Jacob and Marie visited her every day for two weeks. Henri never left her side.

One afternoon Henri returned to the barracks and told Jacob and Marie their mother had died. The next day Sara was buried in a Jewish section of the cemetery in Philippeville. All that Jacob remembers of the funeral is that the cemetery had a view of the sea. A Jewish family from Philippeville promised Henri that when he and his children returned to America, they would tend Sara’s grave.

Given the larger political and global circumstances, that Irene and Jacob were still alive in Philippeville was exceptional. As the historians Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman documented in
FDR and the Jews
, their 2013 history of American policy toward overseas Jews during World War II, during his first term as president Roosevelt put his New Deal policies ahead of the Jewish question
in Europe.
Prior to 1939, about 127,000 Jews had arrived in the United States as refugees, but 110,000 quota spaces were left unfilled. Immigration laws excluded people who might not be able to support themselves in the United States. This represented a political crisis for FDR, who was still managing bank failures and high unemployment rates. In the face of fierce isolationism, nativism, and anti-Semitism at home, Roosevelt concentrated on domestic affairs. To save more Jews, Roosevelt would have had to relax a US immigration system based on discriminatory quotas that had been legislated in 1924.
Even a bill in Congress in 1939, supported by the Catholic Church and Jewish groups in America, that would have admitted ten thousand Jewish children from Europe failed to pass. Roosevelt did not intervene.