For decades, in the backyard shed of Francis Newell’s suburban home, more than 100 fruit boxes, tea boxes and old suitcases gnawed by rats have been left intact in a pile of 3 meters high. Melbourne.
It was packed with thousands of letters—some in German, some in English—and she kept these letters when her father moved out of their Castlemaine home in the 1990s.
The 73-year-old knew that she was receiving a lot of family heirlooms because the family dragged the “mountain of letters” through many of their houses in remote areas Victoria these years. But the scale of the task meant that she kept delaying classifying them.
The retired scholar and teacher knew that her late mother Evelyn Parker was involved in progressive careers when she was young and met her father James Newell during World War II (James Newell).
Parker also told her children about the years she taught English to Jewish families in Berlin in the 1930s, especially the connection she had established with the German couple Max and Malwine Schindler.
The Schindlers-not related to the industrialist Oscar-were seen as a noble couple in the eyes of Francis and her siblings, who resisted the Nazis before and during the war and saved the disadvantaged.
But when Parker died in 1988, their family left a void in the inheritance of their mother and Schindler. When Francis visited Berlin in 2016 to fill in the missing pieces of family folklore, searching Schindler in museums and libraries did not find any important records.
This gap in Schindler’s story gave Frances “a very strong sense of responsibility” to ensure that it would not be forgotten.
So in 2017, she and her siblings finally sat down and started screening these letters.
They discovered vivid details about Parker’s role in the long-forgotten underground network established by anti-Nazi activists, which helped Jews and dissidents escape Germany, The escape route was quickly closed.
‘An important part of the network’
Parker was born in Lancashire in 1912 and met the Schindler family after becoming pen pals to their son Rudolph of the same age. In 1930, she spent a gap year with the Schindler family, after which Rudolf spent a year with her family in England.
Then, in early 1934, she received a letter from Max asking her for emergency help in Berlin.
Max explained that he lost his job in the district council of Neukölln in Berlin because he was active in the Social Democratic Party (SPD in German), which was banned after the Nazis came to power in 1933.
He is now building an English school and library, which is a disguise for SPD alliances and a network of progressive activists to help Jews and others who were persecuted by the Nazis to leave Germany because of politics.
“So, I started,” Parker said in a 14-page handwritten note, which was the only time she had tried to record her experience before. “Most of our students are potential refugees, most of them are Jewish. We teach them the necessary English… and do whatever we can for them.”
The language school meant that the Schindlers could send their students to the UK, where they were accepted by the connections established by the labor movement.
That year, when his daughter was in Berlin, Parker’s father placed a classified ad in the masthead of the “Manchester Guardian” to find “British family accommodation” for Max’s students.Have a With the jews’ scramble, similar advertisements proliferated Leaving Europe.
This allowed Jewish Germans to bypass the exhaustive process of organizing immigration to the United Kingdom or the United States through the Nazi authorities, and the wealth or financial support required by the Nazi authorities to prove their destination was usually not achieved.
Parker’s contacts in England make her an important part of the network. Her presence in Germany means that Schindler can introduce her to people as a visitor, take her to birthdays and social events, and bring SPD members together.
“This is this young English woman, and they can say,’We are taking her to see the scenery and come to see her’,” Francis said. “But there is a potential story behind it-it is about resistance to the Nazis.”
Parker returned to Lancashire in 1935 and continued to communicate with Schindler about the school, while trying to find families in England that could accept more refugees. It was the letters she received from them before and after the war, as well as some photos, that ended up in the shed in Melbourne.
There are also letters to others, including a Jew, Paul Rosenfeld (Paul Rosenfeld). Parker taught him English and helped him prepare for emigration when he was a nanny for his family in 1936. Berlin.
Rosenfeld arrived in England in 1939 and met Parker during the war.
In January 1940, he wrote to her in a letter: “After staying in the hotel for a long time, I unexpectedly meet you again and talk about the memories of the good old days. I am so happy. At the same time, many Things have changed.”
However, he did not continue to communicate with another Jewish woman after the war.Francis later confirmed that she was not spared massacre.
Francis said she has always been proud of her mother’s efforts and her father’s wartime activism, and drew inspiration from them to participate. Protest against the Vietnam War, For which she went to jail twice.
“We must respect them”
At first, Francis’ sister Jane (also Newell) would come to her house to screen letters every Friday. Progress slowed in 2019, but Melbourne’s long-term Covid lockdown in 2020 gave Frances time to devote himself to this process.
She estimated that she would have to spend “more than 600 hours” browsing them.
“In the years before the war, their level of optimism was unbelievable. These are young people who are full of joy and optimism. They really think they will succeed and the world will not follow the path it has traveled. Its great tragedy, the contrast of the early years and the tone of the later years,” Francis said.
Jane said: “When you read these letters, you will feel that Schindler is an individual, as if you know them… Obviously, Mom loves them.”
The Schindler family ran the Internet until the outbreak of war made immigration impossible, but when the Nazis began to expel and expel Berlin Jews in 1941, the couple used their apartment to hide their family from the Gestapo. Max was drafted into the army and served as an English translator for prisoners of war in Buchenwald concentration camp.
Rudolph was sentenced to castration by the court for schizophrenia. Records indicate that he was used as a guinea pig in concentration camp experiments. The cause of Rudolph’s death is unknown.
In a letter to Parker in September 1945, Max wrote: “We risked our lives to hide our Jewish friends until the very last moment.”
The exact number of people that Schindler rescued is unknown, but seven people gave testimony about the couple, which led to Malwin being awarded the “Unsung Hero” by the Berlin Senate in 1963 (Max died a few years after the war).
Except for that ceremony, there are few public details of Schindler’s efforts.
Therefore, at the end of 2019, after realizing the large amount of information he had, Francis asked the city of Berlin to consider installing one of the 12 commemorative plaques selected each year outside Schindler’s home.
The application was supported by research from the Silent Heroes Memorial Center in Berlin. Last month, Plaque unveiled Located outside Schindler’s House at 54 Paris Avenue in Wilmersdorf.
Francis plans to visit next year, and the city has promised to hold an official ceremony to commemorate this moment.
“For the past six years, the sense of responsibility to tell that story has kept me going,” she said. “I find it really difficult to read them through. It’s hard work.”
“At least it’s now recognized,” Jan said. “Mom will be very happy. I think there is a strong feeling that we must respect them in some way. There is also a painful feeling.
“It feels like it hasn’t been rested in peace. It feels important to do something.”
