Wilfrid Israel

Wilfrid Israel was born in London on 11 July 1899 to Amy and Berthold Israel, members of a wealthy Jewish family with roots in Germany extending back to the sixteenth century.[1] His maternal grandfather was Herman Adler, Chief Rabbi of Britain.[1] Israel grew up and received his education in Berlin, where his father owned and directed the department store N. Israel.[1]

The Israel family was prominent in Berlin from the mid-eighteenth century and was active in Jewish communal affairs and employee welfare.[2] The family’s dry-goods business had been founded by Nathan Israel in 1815 and grew into one of Berlin’s largest department stores.[2] Wilfrid was expected to inherit responsibility for the enterprise, but his own interests leaned toward the arts, especially sculpture and painting, and he collected art.[1]

Despite his artistic interests, Israel took responsibility for the business’s workforce and worked to advance employees’ welfare.[1] From 1933 to 1939, he found places outside Nazi Germany for 700 Jewish employees and their families.[1] This combination of commercial responsibility and communal commitment became central to his work as persecution intensified.

Israel’s travels brought him into contact with the difficulties facing Jews in Eastern Europe, including children orphaned or left in distress after the First World War.[1] He helped secure funding from his father for the Ben Shemen youth institution in Mandatory Palestine, became its president, and helped transfer children there.[1] He also supported Habima actors who had come from Russia to Berlin, working alongside Margot Klausner and Lola Hahn-Warburg.[1]

Israel and Recha Freier organized and financed an early group of Jewish young people from Germany to Ben Shemen. Izkor dates the group’s departure to the summer of 1932 and describes the effort as laying foundations for the movement later known as Youth Aliyah.[1] Yad Vashem dates the effort to get the first group of young people from Germany to Mandatory Palestine to 1933.[3] The accounts thus differ over the year of this initial group; both associate Israel and Freier with the effort to bring German Jewish youth to Palestine.

Israel maintained a close relationship with Kibbutz Ha-Zore’a and followed its establishment and development from 1936.[4] He was particularly interested in both Ben Shemen and Ha-Zore’a, the latter established by German Jewish youth.[2] He planned to emigrate to Palestine himself, though he did not do so before his death.[2]

After Adolf Hitler came to power, Israel concluded that Jews needed to leave Germany and became active in Jewish organizations devoted to self-help, emigration, and rebuilding communal life.[3] He worked in the Jewish Zentralausschuss fuer Hilfe und Aufbau, Kinder- und Jugend-Aliyah, and Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden.[2] He held senior positions in organizations promoting emigration, and Jews turned to him for help freeing relatives from camps.[3]

Lola Hahn introduced Israel, described in a historical account as a young German Jewish refugee, to James G. McDonald.[5] Israel and Hahn urged that German Jews themselves be represented on the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees from Germany. They argued that German Jews’ interests could not be left to others and that “only German Jews could extend their assistance into Germany.”[5] McDonald could not directly grant their request because he did not know what the governments on the Commission’s governing body would permit and was planning negotiations with the German government.[5]

As the Nazi regime tightened its control, Israel worked to help people emigrate and to secure the release of Jews held in concentration camps.[3] Following the 1938 Anschluss and the November Kristallnacht pogrom, detainees numbered in the tens of thousands, and those held needed to show that they had a visa to a foreign country in order to be released.[3] Israel worked with British intelligence officer Francis “Frank” Edward Foley, who was responsible for the visa department at the British Embassy in Berlin, and Herbert Pollack, who had connections to the Gestapo.[3] Foley issued visas, while Pollack used money supplied by Israel to bribe officials and obtain emigration papers for inmates.[3] Their cooperation helped many Jews gain release from camps and emigrate from Germany and Austria.[3]

The sources also preserve an account of Foley’s assistance to someone in Israel’s circle. In early 1938, a Jewish friend of Israel arrived in Berlin from Palestine to help Jews leave Germany; the account does not identify him by name.[6] Foley gave the visitor a British passport in place of his Palestinian Mandate passport, warned him about Gestapo reporting requirements, and told him of a special train compartment he could enter if he was in danger.[6] The biographer Naomi Shepherd, quoted in the account, wrote: “If Wilfrid had any British source of protection in Berlin, it was Foley.”[6]

Israel’s willingness to work across political and communal networks is reflected in his contact with Lola Hahn and the refugee commission appeal, and in his cooperation with Foley and Pollack.[5][3] A statement attributed to Israel expresses his sense of responsibility: “The struggle to reach out and touch the world is my particular burden in life.”[3]

The family enterprise became a direct site of Nazi persecution. During Kristallnacht, N. Israel was ransacked, and Jewish employees were arrested and taken to Sachsenhausen.[7] Israel compiled a list of staff members taken there and negotiated their release with camp commander Hermann Baranowski; the employees were freed after Israel promised unlimited credit at the store.[7] He then helped the remaining 200 Jewish employees emigrate, providing them with two years’ salary in cash and finding many of them jobs abroad.[7]

The attacks on the business in 1938 included the smashing of store displays, windows, and equipment, while Jewish employees were rounded up and arrested.[8] At the time, the store still employed about 1,000 people.[8] On 6 February 1939, Israel sent a farewell letter to colleagues and employees; five days later, notices announced that the business had been taken over by non-Jews and renamed the Central Store.[8] The family enterprise, founded in 1815, was sold under German anti-Jewish regulations in 1939.[2]

Israel was arrested three times within five months of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933.[7] His third arrest came in June 1933, when members of the SA broke into a meeting at which he and others were developing welfare plans for unemployed Jewish youth in the provinces.[7] Alfred Wiener alerted state police, and the group was released the following morning; the episode did not deter Israel from continuing his work.[7]

Israel worked with British Quakers and British Jewish leaders on the Kindertransport, which brought children from territory under the Reich to Britain.[3] The first group of children he helped arrived at Harwich on 2 December 1938.[3] After leaving for Britain in May 1939, he returned to Germany to help the final groups of children depart; his final departure from Berlin is dated to 15 May 1939.[7] He used his extensive personal network to secure passage for “countless Jews” in connection with the Kindertransport.[9] This rescue effort followed the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms and the British decision to permit children under 17 to enter the United Kingdom.[9]

Under political pressure, Israel gave up his commercial enterprise and emigrated to England in 1939.[2] After reaching Britain, he continued to work on behalf of refugees. He first worked for Bloomsbury House, which dealt with German Jewish refugees, and later for the Foreign Office.[7] He joined the Allied war effort and served with British intelligence in France and Western Europe.[1] He also became a board member of the Jewish Colonization Association and helped establish the Association of Jewish Refugees in Great Britain in 1941.[2]

In 1943, the Jewish Agency sent Israel to Spain and Portugal to assist refugees and their transfer to Mandatory Palestine.[1] He worked to improve their circumstances and distributed immigration certificates available to him.[1] He organized a ship that brought Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal to the Land of Israel.[3] His work in Lisbon also included arranging entry certificates for refugees.[7] These efforts continued the rescue and emigration work he had undertaken in Germany, now focused on refugees who had escaped to the Iberian Peninsula.

Israel died on 1 June 1943 when the aircraft carrying him was shot down over the Bay of Biscay.[1] Izkor says that he was returning from Lisbon to Bristol and that everyone aboard died, including actor Leslie Howard.[1] Encyclopaedia Judaica likewise describes his death as occurring when the plane carrying him back to England was shot down by the Luftwaffe.[2] Yad Vashem describes the aircraft as being downed on his return to Spain, while Jewish News says he was returning from Lisbon.[3][7]

Israel’s rescue work spanned Jewish employees of the family business, young people seeking a future in Palestine, children brought to Britain through the Kindertransport, and refugees whom he helped free from camps or assist in leaving Europe.[1][3] The sources describe the scale of that work in varying terms. Britannica says his personal network secured passage for “countless Jews” in connection with the Kindertransport.[9] One Globes account says he helped thousands of young Jews emigrate from Germany, while another says that he saved the lives of tens of thousands during the war.[8][10] The latter estimates are not accompanied in the bundle by a precise count.

Israel’s interest in art endured alongside his communal work. He bequeathed the remains of his art collection to Kibbutz Ha-Zore’a, where a museum bearing his name was established to display it.[4] The collection is displayed in the Wilfrid Israel House for Oriental Art and Studies.[2] The museum was founded in 1951 using his collection.[11] Its original holdings included objects from China, Cambodia, Thailand, India, and Nepal; it was the first museum in Israel to exhibit art from those countries.[11]

A later Heritage Center, “Havlei Hatzalah,” operates within the Wilfrid Israel Museum and presents the stories of ten Jewish rescuers.[12] The museum’s chief executive described Israel as “the first Jewish rescuer and perhaps the greatest” in terms of the scale of rescue; this is her assessment, rather than a quantified comparison in the sources.[12] The museum and its collection link Israel’s legacy both to the rescue of Jews during the Nazi period and to the artistic interests that he pursued throughout his life.[2][4]

Published accounts differ on several biographical details. Izkor dates the first youth group Israel and Recha Freier organized for Ben Shemen to the summer of 1932, while Yad Vashem gives 1933.[1][3] Izkor describes his final flight as traveling from Lisbon to Bristol.[1] Jewish News also says he was returning from Lisbon,[7] whereas Yad Vashem says the aircraft was downed on his return to Spain.[3]

Estimates of the scale of his rescue work also vary. Britannica says his network secured passage for “countless Jews” through the Kindertransport.[9] One Globes account says he helped thousands of young Jews emigrate from Germany,[8] while another says he saved tens of thousands of lives.[10] None supplies a precise overall count. The latter Globes article calls him “mysterious” and “controversial” without identifying a substantive controversy.[10] The available sources therefore establish disagreements in chronology, route, and scale, but not a clearly defined controversy about Israel himself.