Most will be familiar with the story of Oskar Schindler who protected Jewish workers in his factories and their families during WWII. Rather less known outside the UK and Israel is Sir Nicholas Winton who organized the “Kindertransport” trains taking 669 mostly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to safety in Britain just before the outbreak of war. It now turns out that at the same time a resourceful young woman was doing much the same in Poland.
Clare Hollingworth’s great nephew Patrick Garrett discovered her story while researching in advance of celebrations for her 105th birthday today. In an old trunk in an attic he found some documents:
Tucked inside a school-issue folder, I found a beautifully crafted certificate, handwritten in German, thanking Clare profusely for unspecified assistance rendered to a group of refugees in Poland in 1939. Also among the papers were two identity cards. One belonged to a woman in her late thirties, Waltraud Slansky, the other to a sallow-faced man by the name of Josef Pollak. Both identities had been testified to by Clare and were countersigned and stamped by a British Consul General.
In her autobiography, Clare made little mention of her activities in early 1939. Garrett decided to look into the British National Archives for clues. Many secret documents can remain classified for 70 years. There he found that she had headed up an organization that had saved perhaps 2-3000
It all began in September 1938 when Chamberlain’s fruitless “Peace for our Time” mission to Munich handed Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region to Hitler. The Nazi takeover prompted frightened refugees to seek sanctuary abroad. Many Brits were ashamed at Chamberlain’s appeasement, and new organisations sprung up to help the refugees, including the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC), which in March 1939 urgently sought a volunteer for a daring mission. They needed someone to travel across Nazi Germany to the Polish port of Gdynia to rendezvous with a large party of high-risk refugees who were hurrying there from Prague.
Clare was a political activist and had spent a winter holiday in Germany. Because of this 1938 visit, she had a Nazi visa.
Already having a Nazi visa meant Clare could volunteer for the BCRC’s mercy mission, and she set off for Poland immediately. She was on the final leg of her mission, from Berlin to Poland’s Baltic coast, when the Nazis marched into Czechoslovakia.
In Gdynia, 451 desperate men, women and their children awaited her. Most were known in Czechoslovakia as anti-Nazis – among them trade unionists, military men, writers and Jews, many who had previously fled Germany and Austria – and would have been high on Gestapo arrest lists. But without proper documents, tickets, funds or any guarantee of onward passage from Poland, many were in imminent danger of being sent back across the border into the waiting hands of the Nazis.
Clare set about organizing shelter and food. She got them documented and arranged entry visas for friendly nations and finally got them to the ports where they caught ships to a new life. Her task accommplished, she stayed in Poland to see what else she could do for the BCRC. Refugees were risking a dangerous crossing from Czechoslovakia to as yet free Poland and the British consul in Katowice was overwhelmed with requests. Clare helped out, interviewing up to 50 people a day. She was later appointed the BCRC’s representive with responsibility for up to 1000 people at a time while they waited for visas and travel. The list of names helped by the BCRC included the Koerbe family who escaped to resettle in the United States. The two year old daughter Madlena is better known as Madeleine Albright.
The National Archives also threw up some indications of why Clare had been recalled in July 1939.
Letters from MI5 officials show complaints were made high-up about the number of "undesirables" - including Germans, communists and Jews - that were showing up with British visas signed by "Hollingworth".
She joined the British Daily Telegraph as a reporter and got the scoop of the century. She reported the massing of Nazi troops on the borders with Poland ready for the invasion. She is therefore credited with breaking the story of the outbreak of WWII. Clare became a famous war reporter, filing copy into her 90s. She moved to Hong Kong in 1981 where she still lives.
The Drotar family were communists from Hungary. Four year old Margo and her mother were detained in Poland while fleeing the Nazi advance. After several days without food the mother held her up to a window to cry in the hope a passer-by might give them help. Instead of food, an unknown woman passer-by got in touch with the local resistance in Kotowice jail. The family were smuggled out and left for England two days before the Nazis invaded. Their ship was met by a photographer and Margo’s picture appeared on the front page of The People newspaper under the headline "What are we fighting for?".
Now Margo Stanyer, she lives in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. After being rescued from Poland, she had four children, nine grandchildren and a great-grandson. It was only in August this year, after Patrick Garrett’s book was published that she knew who the lady with the clipped English accent she met in Katowice was. She sent a special video message to Clare for her birthday.
"Happy Birthday darling Clare," said Margo in her message.
"Live for a hundred years again. I will think of you to the end of my life.
"Thank you very much for what you gave me, and for all those other people. Thank you.
Nicholas Winton did mention his exploits a few times after WWII but Clare was very reticent as her autobiography demonstrates. Along with the other documents in the National Archives, Patrick Garrett found visa applications which had been denied.
It is the rejected applications, Patrick thinks, that explain his great-aunt's silence for all those years. Rather than take pride in the lives she saved, she felt guilt for those left behind.