Bruce Henderson - The Ritchie Boys - The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler

When the 1933–34 school year began, a substitute teacher in Werner’s biology class paused the lesson to advocate for the superiority of an Aryan master race. To demonstrate what he meant, he tried to show how different skull shapes dictated various racial characteristics. At one point, he pointed to Werner, who always sat in front of the class because he was nearsighted and didn’t want to wear glasses.

“This boy has a typical Aryan skull. Just look at its shape. Exactly the same sort of head as Reichsminister Dr. Goebbels.”

Uproarious laughter erupted from the students, who knew that the visiting teacher had picked out the one Jew in the class. Several of the kids came up to Werner after class, not to make fun of him but to ridicule the teacher and the nonsense they were being fed by Nazi teachers.

After Hitler came to power, most Jewish children and teenagers attending German public schools eventually transferred to private Jewish schools. Werner did not. Instead, his education stopped at age sixteen. No one considered Werner too slow witted for higher education, least of all his parents, but he was simply not motivated. He had seldom been challenged; at school, his unimaginative teachers had seemed more concerned with going through the prescribed curriculum than with getting students interested in the material.

Werner told his father he wanted to leave school and learn a trade. Ernst knew that, based on his grades, Werner would not be attending university, and he agreed that there was thus little reason for him to continue in school. He encouraged Werner to look for a field not barred to Jews, which he could enter after he finished the term in spring 1936.

Werner wasn’t interested in working in retail, but he liked animals and hit upon the idea of working at a zoo. Perhaps, he thought, with the optimism characteristic of youth, he might one day lead an expedition to darkest Africa and capture exotic creatures.

Rather than dismiss the idea out of hand, his father helped him write a letter to the director of the Berlin zoo, inquiring about an apprenticeship. The director wrote a polite letter in return, thanking Werner for his interest but pointing out that, under the Nuremberg Laws, he was prohibited from hiring non-Aryans to work at the zoo.

“You see,” said Ernst, “even the chimpanzees are anti-Semitic now.”

One Sunday afternoon, Ernst invited him out on a walk. Werner knew this was how his father liked to have serious talks; out of earshot of the two younger boys—Fritz, thirteen, and Hans, eight—as well as his wife, he could speak more freely.

They strolled down Willdenowstraße, beside the botanical gardens, under old trees, and past the sprawling villa of Reichsminister Walther Darré, a member of Hitler’s cabinet. Black-uniformed SS soldiers stood on guard outside. Other well-known Berlin neighbors were Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who had once lived above a delicatessen on Reichskanzlerplatz, and Hermann Goering, whose old apartment was in a nondescript building on the corner of Kaiserdamm, but none had been as interesting to the neighborhood children as boxer Max Schmeling’s mother, whom Werner once talked into giving him a signed picture of her famous son.

On their walk, in a voice trembling with emotion, Ernst told his son that he could not stay in Germany. The Nazis, he said, had taken away their rights and honor. He was convinced that the younger generation of Jews to which Werner and his brothers belonged no longer had a future there, and must make a life elsewhere. His own generation, his father said, would likely have to stick it out in Germany; resettling at their age and position in life was difficult. He told Werner to keep looking for a trade he wanted to learn, and promised to help him find some practical training, preferably abroad. Werner loved the sound of going “abroad” and looked forward to having an adventure.

Two weeks later, Werner’s father showed him an item in a Jewish newspaper announcing the start of a training farm for prospective Jewish emigrants. Located in western Poland, the farm trained boys and girls over the age of sixteen in agricultural, animal husbandry, and teaching crafts in preparation for emigration to other countries. The sound of working outside and with animals was to Werner’s liking, and he applied. On April 1, 1936, days after finishing the school term, he was called in for an interview with Curt Bondy, the forty-two-year-old psychologist and social educator who headed the program.

The only question Werner would remember from the fifteen-minute interview was Bondy asking him how he felt about being Jewish. Since Werner knew nothing about Bondy’s own position on the subject, he gave a very cautious answer, attesting mainly to attending temple with his parents on holidays. In truth, he had nothing to worry about; Bondy was Jewish, and had been a university teacher until the Nazis fired him in 1933.

A few days later, Werner got a call telling him he had been accepted. The next month, his mother took him to the train station. Their parting was quick and painless, as Werner had been assured he would be able to come home for regular visits. Henny was pleased that her son had the opportunity to learn a trade that would help him emigrate, and Werner was filled with thoughts of forthcoming travel and adventures.

Gross Breesen was a former knight’s manor owned by a Polish Jew who had purchased the property after World War I and was leasing it to Bondy’s group. Upon arrival, Werner found himself in the middle of rolling hills, surrounded by groves of fruit trees and cultivated fields. A large manor stood apart from the livestock barns. The setting looked ideal to Werner; here, he could learn farming and work with animals. He joined more than fifty boys and girls, nearly all of them German Jews, living in the stately manor in the middle of nowhere, with modern conveniences like electric lights, central heating, and bathrooms with hot and cold running water.

Unlike in school, Werner found a real purpose in what he learned at Gross Breesen. From his first six-week training assignment in the dairy barn—up at 4 A.M. every day to feed the cows, milk them by hand, separate the cream, churn the butter—to training in carpentry, hoeing out the weeds in the potato and turnip fields, harvesting crops, and driving horse teams, the lessons, labors, and camaraderie with instructors and trainees alike suited him. The long workdays ordinarily lasted until 6 P.M., although at harvest time they kept working well past sunset, picking crops in the moonlight.

The next year and a half went by quickly for Werner. He learned to farm, grew taller and sturdier, and gained new confidence. Then, in October 1937, a few months after his seventeenth birthday, he received an ominous postcard from his father.

My dear son, I am writing you at this unusual time for a reason. I must speak to you, and ask you to come to Berlin. Don’t ask questions. We will talk about it when you’re here. A big kiss, Papa.

It sounded serious, though Werner had no idea what it could mean. The next Saturday, he took the train to Berlin and went straight to his family’s apartment on Holsteinische Straße. His mother was there alone; his two brothers were out with friends. Henny was clearly happy to see him, but she seemed nervous and distressed. Werner soon found out why.

Papa had decided, Henny told her son, that the entire family had to get out of Germany. It was no longer safe for them to stay. Almost breathlessly, she described their escape plan. Werner’s head spun, trying to take it all in. His banker father, always so honorable in his financial dealings, planned to smuggle the family’s money to Amsterdam, thereby violating the strict national currency laws put in place by the Third Reich to stop emigrating Jews from taking their assets with them. If they were caught, the consequences would be severe.