Wilfrid Israel: 1899-1943

By Naomi Shepherd

The Wilfrid Israel Museum began life with a collection of Far Eastern art bequeathed to the kibbutz by Wilfrid Israel, friend and patron of its young founders. Israel was the last heir of a Berlin Jewish business dynasty, and grandson of the British Chief Rabbi. Friend of both Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann, and an ardent pacifist in his youth, he became one of the leading figures in the rescue of Jewish children and youngsters from Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War.

He was a key link in the famous ‘Kindertransport’ in which ten thousand German Jewish children, without their parents, found refuge in Britain in l938. Internment camps in Britain for young German Jewish men released from Nazi imprisonment, which he proposed, saved another eight thousand lives.

It was only after ensuring the safety of his two thousand employees, and ransoming many Jewish friends, that Wilfrid Israel left Germany for England, days before the outbreak of war in 1939. His links with leading figures in British politics and society were vital to his work, but his dual nationality did not protect him, and his life was constantly in danger of his life from the Gestapo. But his work with an intelligence agent in the British Consulate, who was chief passport officer, helped save many lives. His report on the pre-war concentration camps, the first of its kind to reach British politicians, was smuggled out to Lord Samuel, head of the Anglo Jewish delegation to the Home Office, which authorized the Kindertransport. More important still was his connection with the British Quakers, which dated back to the First World War. Their visit to Germany to confirm the delegation’s plea was vital.

Once in Britain, Wilfrid Israel worked for a research team in Oxford providing background information on German politics to government ministries, and also serving as advisor to the Foreign 0ffice, refugee department. He became the intermediary between anti-Nazi German exiles and the British government, and argued for British recognition of resistance groups within Germany.

At the same time, Wilfrid Israel maintained close ties with the Jewish Agency, and was busy planning the rescue of children from Nazi occupied Europe. It was in June l943, returning from a mission to organize an escape route to Israel via Spain, that he died on a flight to England from Portugal, when his plane was shot down by the Luftwaffe.