Rescue and Flight: American Relief Workers Who Defied the Nazis

Introduction

Introduction In August of 1937 Robert and Elisabeth Dexter and their daughter, Harriet, traveled to England on a trip that began as a family vacation. Robert Dexter was an officer of theAmerican UnitarianAssociation and was heading to Oxford for a meeting of liberal Christian congregations and then to Prague. The Dexters had traveled to similar meetings in previous summers and enjoyed them a great deal, beginning with the impressive meals served on the trans-Atlantic crossings. The American Unitarians maintained direct ties with their fellow congregants at the British UnitarianAssociation, and both theAmerican and British Unitarian associations now shared more than a century of history and friendly exchanges but also a similar problem of declining numbers. Unitarian membership had fallen sharply in Great Britain during World War I and stood at no more than about twentyfive thousand members.1 In the United States, Unitarian congregations and membership had declined during the Depression years.2 Although influential in New England, the Unitarian Church numbered fewer than sixty thousand members in the United States at that time.3 In both countries Unitarian leaders sought ways to make the denomination ’s generally optimistic perspective appear more relevant to its times. American Unitarian ties with congregants in other countries tended to be with those who practiced a liberal form of Christianity that was pluralistic and broad ranging in its interests.That had been the case with their relations with Christians in Germany, but theAmerican Unitarian Association had severed ties after Hitler’s putsch in 1933.4 Before they left for Czechoslovakia for meetings with liberal religious leaders in that country, Robert and Elisabeth dropped off Harriet at an English holiday camp in the countryside northeast of London. Harriet was nineteen years old and had finished her freshman year at Oberlin College in Ohio.5 After a number of days spent around the swimming pool at the camp, Harriet met a young man there who shared her interest in exploring some of the surrounding EastAnglian countryside. He was a slender, fair-haired eighteen-year-old fromVienna named Hans 2. Harriet Dexter, Camp Kessingland, England, 1937. Courtesy of the author. Subak. Ordinarily, a holiday camp in the flatlands of southern England would not have been his idea of a great vacation. However, his parents were aware of the disturbing developments in Germany and had the idea that this would be a good time for their Jewish son to improve on his English. Over the next weeks, a friendship developed between Harriet and Hans. A photograph from that summer shows Harriet standing in front of one of the camp outbuildings. She is wearing a simple sweater over a solid knitted skirt and has dispensed with any jewelry. She has a large forehead like her father’s but her eyes are merry. The effect is wide-open and friendly, and she is looking very happy. When the month was over, Harriet returned to college and Hans toVienna. During that autumn and winter of 1937, Harriet and Hans kept in touch. In March of 1938 Hans and his family’s worst fears came true when Hitler completed the German annexation of Austria, with the overwhelming approval of mostAustrians. For Hans, circumstances were not immediately desperate. The director of his program allowed him to continue his studies and even his stamp club ignored instructions to immediately expel all Jewish members. By April, however, he clearly saw the need to emigrate, and he wrote to the only American he knew—Harriet Dexter. Harriet immediately contacted her parents and pressed them to help her friend. Hans had sent in an application for a U.S. visa, but he needed an American sponsor who would attest to his “morals” and make assurances that as a refugee he would not be an economic burden on the American public. In her unpublished memoirs, Elisabeth Dexter wrote of this moment, of her and Robert’s initial hesitation and their decision to at least meet the young man during their upcoming trip toVienna and Prague. “Our children urged us to sign an affidavit for him, but we elders, who did not know Karl [Hans], hesitated about assuming such a responsibility. As we were going to Europe that summer, however, we made an opportunity to see him and his family.”6 The Dexters were aware of the actions being taken against the Jews in regions controlled by Germany, but helping individual refugees had never been the...