Bertha Bracey

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bertha Lilian Bracey , also Bertha L. Bracey (* 1893 in Bourneville near Birmingham ; † 1989 ) was an English teacher, Quaker, organizer of British refugee aid campaigns during the Nazi period and co-organizer of the Kindertransporte to England.

As a member of the English Quakers , she played an important role in helping those persecuted for political and religious reasons in the German Reich from 1933 to 1945. Best known is her participation in the Kindertransport , through which Jewish children threatened by the Holocaust could be brought out of Germany .

Youth and education

Bertha Bracey studied at Birmingham University and worked as a teacher for five years after graduating.

Collaboration in the Quaker relief organization

Bertha Bracey joined the Quakers when she was 19, retired from school in 1921 and then spent eight years (1921–1929) in the international service of the Friends. She first organized and directed a youth club in Vienna and then did youth and social work in Nuremberg and Berlin. In both cities, she organized what has become known as the Quaker feeding : help for impoverished and starving people, but especially help for children.

From 1927 to 1929 Bertha Bracey was the representative of the British Quakers in the Quaker office in Berlin. From 1929 she worked in the administration of the Quaker headquarters in London, the "Friends House". There she was responsible for relief operations in Germany and Holland. Due to her stays in Germany, she recognized the dangers of the emerging National Socialism early on and tried to create awareness for this in Great Britain.

Relief operations initiated and supported by Bracey

Bertha Bracey had taken on an outstanding leadership role in the Friends House in London and was mainly responsible for appeals for aid from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. On April 7, 1933, the Germany Emergency Committee (GEC) was founded here to support refugees from the German Reich , which was later renamed the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (FCRA) . Bertha Bracey became the head of the GEC and soon had a staff of 80 volunteers. From 1939 the committee worked with other refugee aid organizations at Bloomsbury House .

Bracey stayed in Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War and was in contact with the Frankfurt Quakers . Their "scribe" (head), Rudolf Schlosser , maintained close contacts with Martin Buber . At Schlosser's mediation, Elisabeth F. Howard and Bertha Bracey had the opportunity to visit Buber in his house in Heppenheim and to discuss the similarities between liberal Judaism and liberal Christianity.

The rest home project

Bertha Bracey and Helen W. Dixon were the main initiators of the Rest Home project, which was supposed to create a protected place for the politically persecuted in what was then Germany in order to strengthen the resistance against National Socialist Germany. The rest home existed in the small Taunus town of Falkenstein until it was closed in 1939 .

The Quaker School in Eerde

For this school, which was finally founded in 1934 after a lengthy discussion within the Quaker community in Holland, Bertha Bracey was the most important fundraiser. However, it almost prevented their establishment; In March 1934 she pleaded for abandoning the entire school project and using the money raised for other German refugees. However, she was unable to assert herself with this position, and the school opened in April 1934.

The establishment of the Stoatley Rough School

Bertha Bracey helped found the Stoatley Rough School for German refugee children in Haslemere in England. Her involvement here began when Hilde Lion , one of the school founders, contacted the "Germany Emergency Committee (GEC)" in 1933 to ask for help for a school that was supposed to introduce German children to the British education system. Bracey remained closely associated with the school until 1960. World icon

Supporting political prisoners

Brinson and Kaczynski point out that, in addition to her work in the GEC / FCRA, Bertha Bracey was involved in many committees and initiatives that took care of prisoners in Germany and their families. She was also involved in the work to support Carl von Ossietzky's family during his imprisonment in the concentration camp.

The Kindertransport

Bertha Bracey recognized the threat to the Jews in Germany after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. “Words are not adequate to tell of the anguish of some of my Jewish friends.” After the November pogroms 1938 she visited Berlin and was then part of the delegation that met with the British Interior Minister Sir Samuel Hoare to inform him of the need for immediate admission convince Jewish children from Germany as refugees in England. She then led the Quaker team that became part of the “Movement for the Care of Children from Germany”. Bracey became secretary of the "Inter-Church Council for German Refugees".

The German Educational Reconstruction Committee (GER)

Fritz Borinski, one of the founders of the GER, reported that Bertha Bracey had only made it possible, through a donation from a Quaker fund, that in February 1943 a loose emigrant alliance could become an organization with paid employees.

Rescue operation for surviving children from Theresienstadt

Bertha Braceys organized another rescue operation in 1945 shortly before the end of the war. As a result of the American advance, three hundred orphans were found alive in the Theresienstadt concentration camp . Bracey was able to arrange that these children could be taken to a reception center on Lake Windermere with the help of the RAF bomber command .

Post-war activities

In 1946 Bertha Bracey was appointed by the Allied High Commission for Germany to be responsible for refugee matters; later she was responsible for women's issues in the British and American zones. She held this position until she left the company in 1953 at the age of 60.

Bertha Bracey, of whom few personal things have survived, spent her old age , suffering from Parkinson's disease , in a Quaker retirement home.

Awards

In 1942 Bertha Bracey was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her work for refugees .

In 2001, a sculpture in honor of Bertha Bracey was unveiled in front of the Friends House in London . A plaque bears the inscription:

"To honor Bertha Bracey (1893–1989) who gave practical leadership of Quakers in quietly rescuing and re-settling thousands of Nazi victims and lone children between 1933–1948."

In 2010, Bertha Bracey was posthumously named “British Hero of the Holocaust” by the government under Prime Minister Gordon Brown for her commitment .

A post on the English website commemorating the Kindertransporte refers to these two honors. It is also pointed out, however, that Bertha Bracey and her commitment are little known to a broad British public and are gradually in danger of being forgotten.

Works

A number of publications by Bertha Bracey are listed in the WorldCat database . Many of them are book reviews, but there are also essays on the Quakers, displaced persons and the refugee problem.

literature

  • Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust. Ordinary Britons Who Risked Their Lives to Make a Difference , Ebury Press, London, 2012, ISBN 978-0-09-194067-6 .
  • Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis. Inner Light in Outer Darkness , University of Missouri Press, Columbia and London, 1997, ISBN 0-8262-1134-8 .
  • Charmian Brinson and William Kaczynski: Fleeing from the Führer. A postal History of Refugees from the Nazis , The History Press, Stroud, 2011, ISBN 0-7524-6195-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Actually "Religious Society of Friends", in German "Religious Society of Friends", whereby often only the short forms "Friends" or "Freunde" are used.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Chapter Bertha Bracey in: Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , pp. 31–50
  3. ↑ All other biographical information comes from the previously cited book by Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , pp. 31–50 , unless a different source is named
  4. ↑ a b Berta Bracey and the founding of the Stoatley Rough School ( Memento of the original from June 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.geo.brown.edu
  5. ↑ JENNIFER TAYLOR: THE MISSING CHAPTER: HOW THE BRITISH QUAKERS HELPED TO SAVE THE JEWS OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA FROM NAZI PERSECUTION.
  6. ↑ A good overview of the British Quaker relief organizations can be found on the Quakers, relief and rescue in 1930s and 1940s Europe page
  7. ↑ The building known as Bloomsbury House was the Palace Hotel on Bloomsbury Street in London; Over time, the name Bloomsbury House has been used for this. ( Bloomsbury House training schemes )
  8. ↑ Petra Bonavita: Quakers as Rescuers in Frankfurt am Main during the Nazi era , Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart, 2014, ISBN 3-89657-149-4 , p. 67
  9. ↑ Hans A. Schmitt: Quakers and Nazis , p. 79
  10. ^ The story of Stoatley Rough School . The history of the school is very well documented on this website and its following pages.
  11. ^ Charmian Brinson and William Kaczynski: Fleeing from the Führer , p. 137
  12. ↑ For the debate on this in the English House of Commons, see its minutes from late November and early December 1938: RACIAL, RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL MINORITIES (especially sections 1473 and 1474, debate on November 21, 1938), debate on November 23, 1938 , refugees debate November 24, 1938 and refugees, debate December 1, 1938
  13. ^ Fritz Borinski: German Educational Reconstruction. Review and memory. In: Hellmut Becker, Willi Eichler and Gustav Heckmann (eds.): Education and politics. Minna Specht on her 80th birthday. Publishers Public Life, Frankfurt, 1960, pp. 77–89
  14. ↑ Bertha Bracey OBE . For the reception camp on Lake Windermere, compare: [Ben Helfgott | The Boys | The concentration camp survivors of Windermere]
  15. ↑ Bertha Bracey OBE
  16. ^ Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , p. 49
  17. ↑ Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , p. 50. “In honor of Bertha Braceys (1893-1989) who exemplified the leadership of the Quakers in the peaceful rescue and reintegration of thousands of Nazi victims and lonely children between 1933 -1948 existed. "
  18. ^ Britons honored for holocaust heroism. In: The Daily Telegraph . March 9, 2010, archived from the original on March 9, 2010 ; accessed on December 5, 2016 . Besides Bertha Bracey, 26 other people received this award. Lyn Smith's book Heroes of the Holocaust is dedicated to them all . Ordinary Britons Who Risked Their Lives to Make a Difference .
  19. ^ In memory of Bertha Bracey
  20. ^ Literature by and about Bertha Bracey in the bibliographic database WorldCat
personal data
SURNAME Bracey, Bertha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bracey, Bertha Lilian (full name); Bracey, Bertha L.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English teacher, Quaker, organizer of British refugee aid campaigns during the Nazi era and co-organizer of the Kindertransporte to England
DATE OF BIRTH 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Bourneville near Birmingham
DATE OF DEATH 1989