[Leica] Leica Freedom Train

[nathan at nathanfoto.com (Nathan Wajsman)]

I have heard this story several times here on the LUG since joining the 
list in 1998. What has always bothered me a bit is that I never heard 
any mention of it outside the Leica community. Therefore, thanks for the 
reference to the book, I will check it out. I want the story to be true, 
but we also know that a whole lot of people suddenly became anti-Nazi 
after May 1945...

Nathan

Martin Krieger wrote:
> A story I had never heard before - a tale of courage, integrity and 
> humility that is only now coming to light, some 70 years after the 
> fact.
>
> The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. From a nitpicking point of view, it
> wasn't the very first still camera to use 35mm movie film, but it was the
> first to be widely publicized and successfully marketed.
>
> It created the "candid camera" boom of the 1930s.
> It is a German product - precise, minimalist, utterly efficient. Behind
> its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially
> oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, 
> generosity and modesty. E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of 
> Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.
>
> And Ernst Leitz II, the steely eyed Protestant patriarch who headed 
> the closely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in 
> such a
> way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler."
> As George Gilbert, a veteran writer on topics photographic, told the 
> story at last week's convention of the Leica Historical Society of 
> America in
> Portland, Ore., Leitz Inc., founded in Wetzlar in 1869, had a tradition of
> enlightened behavior toward its workers. Pensions, sick leave, health
> insurance - all were instituted early on at Leitz, which depended for 
> its work force upon generations of skilled employees - many of whom 
> were Jewish.
>
> The 'Leica Freedom Train'
>
> As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst
> Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for 
> his
> help in getting them and their families out of the country.
> As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's
> Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited 
> their professional activities.
>
> To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what
> has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica Freedom
> Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of 
> Leitz
> employees being assigned overseas.
> Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were
> "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the
> United States.
>
> Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938,
> during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany.
>
> Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner
> Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of
> Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic
> industry.
>
> Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - a new
> Leica.
>
> The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this
> migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and
> writers for the photographic press.
>
> Keeping the story quiet
>
> The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939,
> delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the
> invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.
>
>   By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks
> to the Leitzes' efforts.
>
> How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it? Leitz Inc. was 
> an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the 
> newly resurgent Reich. The company produced range-finders and other 
> optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government 
> desperately
> needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for
> optical goods was the United States.
>
>   Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good
> works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews 
> and
> freed only after the payment of a large bribe.
>
> Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after
> she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. 
> She
> eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of
> questioning.
>
> She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living
> conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women, 
> who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s. (After 
> the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian 
> efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur des Palms Academic from 
> France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European 
> Academy in the 1970s.)
>
> Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late 
> Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted 
> no publicity for
> its heroic efforts.
>
> Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the "Leica
> Freedom Train" finally come to light. It is now the subject of a 
> book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom 
> Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California- born rabbi currently 
> living in England.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>   

-- 
Nathan Wajsman
Almere, The Netherlands

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