Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 10:01 AM 11/22/1999 -0800, Jim Laurel wrote: >Speaking of the Leitz workers... I watched "Schindler's List" again last >night, and recalled that Leitz faced similar difficulties during the war, >and was able to help some of its workers escape the country. Marc, since >you're our resident historian, would you care to recount the story? This is quite a bit different than the situation of Schindler's List. The story runs that the Leitz family figured out which of their workers were in danger of being carted off by the Gestapo for one reason or the other -- some were Socialists, some were Seventh Day Adventists, some were Jews, some were foreign-born, and a few, the story goes, were suspected of being gay, all grounds for "movement to the East", or the death camps. You could not take money out of Germany with you. But the Leitz family arranged for these workers to be given a ticket to France and a new Leica camera each, which the Nazis allowed them to take. They could then sell the cameras to grubstake their new life. This is supposed to have occurred in the summer of '37 to '39. I'll have to writ Emil Keller and ask him about it, as he was a Leitz employee at the time, though in New York. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!