Return to the Schilderwald — A Jew Comes Home After Sixty-Eight Years

The Jewish side of my family lost a number of people in Hitler’s death camps, but for many years there were unconfirmed rumors that a distant cousin — a young boy — had gotten out of the country and was living somewhere. We just didn’t know who he was or where he lived.

Then a few years ago, Foley: The Spy Who Saved 10,000 Jews was published in England. In it, Daily Telegraph correspondent Michael Smith told the story of Frank Foley, an MI6 operative at the British embassy in Berlin in the late 1930s whose cover was passport control officer.

It turned out that Foley, who is touted on the book’s cover as Britain’s Schindler after the legendary Oskar Schindler, managed to arrange transit to New Zealand in 1939 for my cousin, then three years old, and his parents at a time when Jews were, for all intents and purposes, trapped and doomed.

Not coincidental to publication of Foley, my cousin and I finally connected through another family member. A thriving correspondence followed with this most erudite gentleman, a bibliophile and man of the world, lives in a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, and writes under the pen name of Country Bumpkin.

Mr. Bumpkin has been guest-blogging at Kiko’s House on various goings on — the changing of the seasons in New Zealand, politics, culture and personal reflections. Now 72, he recently returned to Germany for the first time in 68 years. I have excerpted his account here.

It is a touching remembrance of things past and an astute commentary on things present and future.