(from Dublin Community News)
The
Hide-And-Seek Children:
Recollections of Jewish Survivors from Slovakia,
by Barbara
Barnett
BY YANKY
FACHLER
This book is really three books in one. It is the story of a 12-month
period between 1948 and 1949 when 100 children, all of whom had been plucked
from post-war Slovakia and many of whom had experienced unbelievable hardships
in the Holocaust, spent a year in Ireland, most of them in Clonyn Castle in
County Meath. It is the story of one of the Holocaust’s unsung heroes, Rabbi Dr
Solomon Schonfeld, a true maverick who rescued thousands of Jews from Europe
before and after the war. And it is a collection of personal reminiscences
written by the children about their lives before, during and after their stay in
Clonyn Castle.
I have long believed that Rabbi Schonfeld’s exploits deserve far
greater publicity. He was a one-man human dynamo, who hardly slept, and who had
a habit of rushing in where angels feared to tread. He also had colossal
chutzpah. His son Jonathan told me that his father created a letterhead on which
it said: “The Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council,” with himself as
Executive Director. Not only was the council a figment of Rabbi Schonfeld’s
imagination; but Chief Rabbi Joseph H Hertz had not been consulted! Happily, the
Chief Rabbi gave his retroactive blessing to the council, and his own daughter
Judith would eventually fall in love with and marry the young, charismatic and
persistent rabbi. His antics are very reminiscent of another famous rescuer’s
antics. When Nicholas Winton was single-handedly responsible for saving hundreds
of children from Prague just before the war, he had notepaper printed that bore
the non-existent heading: “British Committee for Refugees, Czechoslovakia,
Children's Section.” Just as with Rabbi Schonfeld’s fictitious council, the
notepaper persuaded government officials that this was an official
organisation.
As with many mavericks, Rabbi Schonfeld was not universally admired.
Some people regarded him as too pushy and too abrasive – attributes that
undoubtedly helped him rescue so many rabbis, religious leaders, and children.
Others regarded him as too “frum” – too orthodox for their taste. Yes, he was
unapologetically ultra-orthodox. Yes, he was very concerned for the continuity
of orthodox Judaism after the catastrophe of the Holocaust. Hardly a crime, I
would think – and yet this prevented otherwise decent Jews from cooperating with
him. (The gentiles never had any problems with him – they admired the fact that
a rabbi would so fervently want to save his flock.)
Rabbi Schonfeld had real enemies in the gentile world too. He
survived a plot to assassinate him, but some of the occupants of the car he was
supposed to travel in were killed. For his own safety, he was advised to wear a
uniform on his trips abroad after the war. Since he had not served in the army,
he had the chutzpah to design his own uniform, with matching badge and cap. He
looked very dashing as he criss-crossed Europe searching for Jewish children,
and no one ever challenged him about his uniform.
The main theme of the book is the Clonyn Castle episode. Many readers
will be familiar with the bare bones of the story. After years of negotiations,
the Irish Government finally agreed to allow a group of 100 youngsters to
recuperate in Ireland. Rabbi Schonfeld’s first attempt to bring Jewish Bergen
Belsen orphans children to Ireland in 1946 failed when the justice minister made
it known that he feared that “any substantial increase in our Jewish population
might give rise to an anti-Semitic problem.” With the help and perseverance of
Robert Briscoe, Rabbi Schonfeld finally got the permit he needed in August 1947.
It was not until January 1948 that the British Home Office allowed the children
from Slovakia to transit via Britain to Ireland. The Irish government made their
permission dependent on two conditions: the children could stay a maximum of one
year; and the cost of their stay in Ireland was to be borne entirely by Rabbi
Schonfeld’s (now kosher) Chief Rabbi’s Religious Emergency Council.
(Incidentally, by now Chief Rabbi Hertz had died, and his successor was Rabbi
Israel Brodie.)
Rabbi Schonfeld was gifted Clonyn Castle by a Mancunian Jew, Yankel
Levy, who bought the castle for this purpose. The rabbi chose a husband-and-wife
team, Israel and Trudi Cohen, still in their mid-twenties, to run the home for
the children. In typical fashion, Rabbi Schonfeld gave them 24 hours notice to
pack their bags in London and depart with their 12-month-old child for Clonyn
Castle.
It has to be admitted that although the author certainly did not set
out to portray the Irish Jewish community in a poor light, her description of
the relationship between some members of the community and the children makes
difficult reading. Ms Barnett describes the “mixed feelings” within the
community regarding the Clonyn Castle children. While many in the community
responded positively and generously to the opportunity to help the recuperation
of the Holocaust survivors, others actively opposed Rabbi Schonfeld’s scheme.
They refused to allow funds already collected for Youth Aliya to go towards
Orthodox refugee children – even though a sizeable proportion of the children
did go to Israel. It is impossible not to be appalled at the narrow-mindedness
of these people, whose antipathy to the Orthodox rabbi was such that they failed
to see the human dimension of children - Jewish children - who had gone through
the Holocaust. I cannot help seeing a similarity in their attitude to that of
the priest of the local cathedral in Delvin who warned his parishioners not to
accept the children, describing them as blood-thirsty and disease-ridden.
(Luckily, the priest’s flock ignored him, and established very cordial relations
with the new residents of the castle.)
Happily, there is a heroine in the story – Mrs Olga Eppel. She was
chair of the Dublin Jewish Ladies Guild, and she became the outstandingly
capable administrator of Clonyn Castle. Olga was born in Dublin, and seemed to
have a strong enough character for Rabbi Schonfeld and Robert Briscoe to decide
that she would be suitable for the job.
The third book within a book is the personal reminiscences of the
Clonyn Castle children. No matter how many personal memoirs I read, I never fail
to be moved by the stories. Examples include Tomi Reichental’s “I was a child in
Bergen-Belsen” and the late Zoltan Zinn-Collis’ “Final Witness: My Journey from the Holocaust to
Ireland.” Some of the stories in “The Hide-and-Seek Children” are
heart-rending, while others are heart-warming. Jewish Kapos have had a bad
press, often deservedly so. So I was all the more moved by the story of Fela
Cajtak Maybaum, a 25-year old Auschwitz Kapo in charge of 1,000 Hungarian girls
aged between two and sixteen years in Block B. She managed to imbue numerous
girls with the will and strength that enabled them to survive. One of the girls
recognised Fela in a Jerusalem street 23 years later, and Fela was eventually
awarded a special honour from Yad Vashem, with dozens of “her” girls in
attendance. Fela was not in Clonyn Castle, but she is mentioned by some of her
girls in their reminiscences.
Barbara Barnett has written an important addition to Holocaust
literature. A number of events in Ireland are being planned around “The
Hide-and-Seek Children”
30 April – 2 May 2013.