50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany

Image of 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany
Author(s): 
Release Date: 
April 22, 2014
Publisher/Imprint: 
Harper Collins
Pages: 
320
Reviewed by: 

“It can be challenging to create suspense in a tale for which the ending is known. Pressman does a good job with 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple’s Extraordinary Rescue Mission in the Heart of Nazi Germany, a book whose title pretty much tells it all.”

“. . . Gil felt the weight of selecting fifty children from among the hundreds whose parents had become desperate enough to send them away.”

It can be challenging to create suspense in a tale for which the ending is known. Pressman does a good job with 50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple’s Extraordinary Rescue Mission in the Heart of Nazi Germany, a book whose title pretty much tells it all.

Early on Pressman introduces some of the children who will be rescued by Gil and Eleanor Kraus. Some are from affluent families. Others are working class. Some rarely attend religious services. Others practice their faith regularly. Some of their fathers fought valiantly for Austria in World War I. All consider themselves patriotic Austrians. All are dismayed when on March 12, 1938, Austria peacefully annexed itself to Germany in what has become known as the Anschluss.

It took only days for Hitler’s Judenrein to begin as the first signs went up on benches indicating that they were reserved for Aryans; and then Jewish doctors were barred from practicing medicine, Jews were banned from certain stores, stores owned by Jews were spray-painted with the word Jude and “Aryanized” (handed over to Aryan owners for little or no money) as were Jewish homes. Eventually Hermann Göring, Hitler’s field marshal, decreed that Jews were not welcome anywhere in Austria.

Many Jews fled. Others stayed due either to lack of funds or connections or because there was nowhere to flee. The United States at that time had an isolationist view, strict immigration policies, and was largely anti-Semitic. We were not alone. It was into this maelstrom that Gil and Eleanor Kraus, both Jewish, plunged with the intention of rescuing fifty children and bringing them to America.

Readers like heroes to be recognizable even familiar, and Pressman does a reasonable job at bringing Eleanor and Gil to life, giving us just enough backstory about their childhoods, education, and subsequent marriage. His job is easier with Eleanor as the story progresses, because he drew much of his material from her journals.

We are privy to her fears and foibles and are treated, often in painstaking detail, to her attire, such as a new hat: “a red tweed tricorn with a green bird that looked like a parakeet and a wonderful yellow veil.”

Pressman states that the Krauses were ordinary citizens, not high-ranking government officials. Gil Kraus was a lawyer; Eleanor a wife and mother, who’d recently obtained a job in a department store.

But as their story unfolds one realizes that they were far from ordinary. For one thing they noticed the dire situation in Europe, hatched a plan, and managed to execute it. To do this they wrote letters, gathered affidavits from dozens of sponsors, made numerous phone calls and trips to Washington DC seeking support from high-ranking politicians, and then traveled to Germany at great personal risk. Eleanor wore her new hat.

Pressman’s skillful use of the political tension in Germany and the unending setbacks and deadlines the Krauses faced make this book highly readable. It may be eye opening to some that many of these obstacles came from within the United States, both from our government and from other organizations—Jewish and otherwise—that held the same purpose: to rescue Jews from Nazi-occupied Germany. These entities complained that the Kraus’s mission might hurt others’ chances, that the Krauses knew nothing about foster care, that the Krauses would render the immigration laws less stringent (opening the flood gates, one might almost say)… Then again, these petty debates might have a familiar ring. To this day, self-interest continues to be a powerful motivator.

The most moving scene takes place at the train station when the parents deliver their children for the transport. They are instructed not to wave goodbye, as Jews are not allowed to give the Hitler salute. Should a goodbye wave be misconstrued, they could be arrested. And so they stand, arms at their sides, and watch their sobbing children pull out of the station, not knowing if they will ever see them again.

As the title suggests, the rescue mission is successful, and Pressman rewards readers with some heartwarming glimpses into the children’s indoctrination into American pastimes and food. “It looked like some kind of jelly, which was bright red and with slices of banana inside of it,” [one child] remembered. “. . . none of us knew what the red wiggly stuff was, which we all very carefully scraped away. We thought it was some kind of preservative to protect the banana floating inside.” Modern readers will of course recognize Jell-O salad.

Pressman was able to contact or account for 37 of the 50 children rescued and provides short biographies of their lives (19 were living, 18 deceased). Thirteen remain unaccounted for; their names are listed in the back of the book.

The ending for other Jewish children—1.5 million to be precise—was quite different than for the 50 children whom Gil and Eleanor Kraus, an extraordinary, ordinary couple, went to great lengths, time, and expense to transport from Nazi-occupied Austria to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1939.