Ilse Stanley
Encyclopedia
Ilse Stanley (née
Ilse Davidsohn), (March 11, 1906 – ), was a German Jewish woman who, with the collusion of a handful of people ranging from Nazi
members of the Gestapo
to other Jewish civilians, secured the release of 412 Jewish prisoners from concentration camps between 1936 and 1938.
During that time she also helped countless others leave the country while it was still possible for German Jew
s to do so legally. This story was sketched publicly in 1955 on Ralph Edwards
's television program, This Is Your Life
, and is told in vivid detail in Stanley's autobiographical book, The Unforgotten, which was published in the United States during 1957.
, Germany
. The family moved to Berlin
when her father, Magnus Davidsohn
, was named as the main cantor
at the new Fasanenstraße Synagogue
being built in the Charlottenburg
section of Berlin. The first time she entered the still-unfinished building, Ilse fell deeply in love with this synagogue (which she called "my House") and her life became thoroughly entwined with this synagogue. As a child of six she had the honor of presenting flowers to the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm, when he came to dedicate the new temple, which opened on August 26, 1912.
Ilse graduated from the Auguste-Victoria-Schule (in Charlottenburg) at the age of fifteen. After graduation she continued to study theatre history and theatre science at the Theatre Science Institute and at the Berlin University, while working part-time as a bookkeeper and office manager. Later she studied acting and directing at the Max Reinhardt
's Deutsches Theater
(Berlin) and elsewhere. Using the stage name "Ilse Davis", her primary interest was in acting on the stage, although she also played bit parts in several films, including Fritz Lang
's Metropolis
. Her interest and ambition broadened to include directing and producing, and in 1929, just after turning twenty, she opened her own theatre organization. In this endeavor she handled everything from theatre production, promotion and publicity, to public relations; she also ran an Academy where entrants were taught acting, directing, and production.
Her acting career ended abruptly in 1933, however, as increasing pressure was put on the Jews by Hitler
and his Third Reich
and she was no longer able to rent theatres and concert halls. For the next three years, until 1936, she gave recital tours, speaking to her fellow Jews "wherever I was permitted to speak."
, posing as a social worker and under an assumed name. With falsified release papers, she secured the liberation of her cousin's husband.
Having succeeded with this ruse
on her first attempt, she continued rescue work for two more years. In order to have a cover-up office from which to do her work, and to provide a legitimate front for getting people out of Germany, she took a volunteer position with the vice-president of the Jewish Community, whom she calls "Mr. Gross" in her book. She worked in the Passports Office, on "the most hopeless" cases. In addition to working out passport issues for people and enabling many Jews to leave the country, she continued her trips to the camps, ultimately securing the release of 412 people before the devastating events of Kristallnacht
(November 9, 1938).
Five days before Ilse's planned departure, her mother was summoned to the Gestapo on Alexanderplatz
. Ilse went in her stead. (Once again, her acting past unexpectedly surfaced: the younger of the two interrogators recognized her.) After her mother's situation was clarified, Ilse made a near-fatal mistake: she mentioned her own impending departure. Questioning ensued, and, having nothing to lose, Ilse spoke quietly and openly. She spoke of living in fear since Kristallnacht, and of the need to live without such fear. Then she talked about presenting flowers to the Emperor at the age of six, about Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication and flight from Germany on November 9, 1918, and about Kristallnacht, which happened exactly twenty years after the Emperor's flight (November 9, 1938). One of her two interrogators broke down sobbing. She was allowed to leave the office, and three days later, she and Manfred left for England. After a brief stop there, they sailed from Southampton on the SS Deutschland
on August 4, 1939, arriving in the U.S. on August 11.
(much needs to be added here)
In her later years she moved to Boston, and then to New Hampshire, where she worked as an auctioneer. She died in Boston in 1970 and is buried in Gilford, New Hampshire in the Smith Meeting House cemetery.
, featuring Ilse and in particular her rescue work. On that program she was reunited with her father, Magnus Davidsohn, who had been living in England since he left Germany in 1939.
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Ilse Davidsohn), (March 11, 1906 – ), was a German Jewish woman who, with the collusion of a handful of people ranging from Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
members of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
to other Jewish civilians, secured the release of 412 Jewish prisoners from concentration camps between 1936 and 1938.
During that time she also helped countless others leave the country while it was still possible for German Jew
History of the Jews in Germany
The presence of Jews in Germany has been established since the early 4th century. The community prospered under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades...
s to do so legally. This story was sketched publicly in 1955 on Ralph Edwards
Ralph Edwards
Ralph Livingstone Edwards was an American radio and television host and television producer.-Early career:Born in Merino, Colorado , Edwards worked for KROW-AM in Oakland, California while he was still in high school...
's television program, This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...
, and is told in vivid detail in Stanley's autobiographical book, The Unforgotten, which was published in the United States during 1957.
Early life
Ilse was born in 1906 in the small mining town of GleiwitzGliwice
Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Gliwice is the west district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The family moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
when her father, Magnus Davidsohn
Magnus Davidsohn
Magnus Davidsohn was chief cantor of the Fasanenstrasse synagogue from its opening in 1912 until its closing by the Nazis in 1936. A trained opera singer, he played the part of King Heinrich in Gustav Mahler's 1899 production of Lohengrin. After leaving Berlin in 1939, he helped found Belsize...
, was named as the main cantor
Hazzan
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...
at the new Fasanenstraße Synagogue
Fasanenstrasse synagogue
The Fasanenstraße Synagogue was a liberal Jewish synagogue in Berlin, Germany opened on 26 August 1912. It was located in an affluent neighbourhood of Charlottenburg on Fasanenstraße off Kurfürstendamm at numbers 79–80, close to the Berlin Stadtbahn and Zoo Station.-Construction:The synagogue was...
being built in the Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg
Charlottenburg is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte...
section of Berlin. The first time she entered the still-unfinished building, Ilse fell deeply in love with this synagogue (which she called "my House") and her life became thoroughly entwined with this synagogue. As a child of six she had the honor of presenting flowers to the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm, when he came to dedicate the new temple, which opened on August 26, 1912.
Ilse graduated from the Auguste-Victoria-Schule (in Charlottenburg) at the age of fifteen. After graduation she continued to study theatre history and theatre science at the Theatre Science Institute and at the Berlin University, while working part-time as a bookkeeper and office manager. Later she studied acting and directing at the Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
's Deutsches Theater
Deutsches Theater
The Deutsches Theater in Berlin is a well-known German theatre. It was built in 1850 as Friedrich-Wilhelm-Städtisches Theater, after Frederick William IV of Prussia. Located on Schumann Street , the Deutsches Theater consists of two adjoining stages that share a common, classical facade...
(Berlin) and elsewhere. Using the stage name "Ilse Davis", her primary interest was in acting on the stage, although she also played bit parts in several films, including Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
's Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
. Her interest and ambition broadened to include directing and producing, and in 1929, just after turning twenty, she opened her own theatre organization. In this endeavor she handled everything from theatre production, promotion and publicity, to public relations; she also ran an Academy where entrants were taught acting, directing, and production.
Her acting career ended abruptly in 1933, however, as increasing pressure was put on the Jews by Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and his Third Reich
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
and she was no longer able to rent theatres and concert halls. For the next three years, until 1936, she gave recital tours, speaking to her fellow Jews "wherever I was permitted to speak."
Concentration camps
Unable to work at what she loved, and having no hope for matters to improve in the foreseeable future, Ilse became quite discouraged. In 1936, an unexpected set of circumstances led to her making a trip to Sachsenhausen concentration campSachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
, posing as a social worker and under an assumed name. With falsified release papers, she secured the liberation of her cousin's husband.
- The story of how Ilse accomplished this is interesting enough to tell in full:
- In 1936, a cousin of Ilse's came to Berlin to consult a lawyer about getting her husband released from a concentration camp. The cousin had not yet realized the seriousness of Germany's situation, in which law and order was simply not operating. In the ensuing conversation, both women became distraught. After much soul-searching and a visit to her beloved Synagogue, Ilse reached a life-changing decision. Pitting her faith in the "goodness even in people who have been taught nothing but evil" p.68 against the odds of failure, she took her cousin to the GestapoGestapoThe Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
headquarters to look for help.
- As they walked the halls with appropriately downcast eyes, they were stopped by an officer who took Ilse aside. As he questioned her closely about "Davis" and then "Ilse", she recognized "Fritz" (whose real name was Hans)—a theatre policeman from her acting days, for whose younger sister she had arranged a gala weekend in Berlin in honor of the girl's 16th birthday.
- The two met later in a café, and Fritz explained to Ilse a plan he had devised. In the guise of a social worker and using the alias "Feldern", Ilse would hand-carry the release papers to the concentration camp and pick up the prisoner. Going in person had the essential element of surprise, which greatly increased the likelihood that the camp would actually release the prisoner, who might otherwise be quietly killed instead of released, particularly if he was in "unpresentable" condition.
- The rules were stringent: a trusted GentileGentileThe term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....
chauffeur would drive Ilse to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where her cousin's husband was held. She would enter alone, present the papers, and wait for the prisoner to be brought to her. If questioned about the papers, she would give the name of a (cooperating) high-placed Nazi lawyer, but say no more. No one must know when or where she was going, but a trusted, distant acquaintance—not a family member—would know when she was leaving and when to expect her return. If she did not return by the specified time, he was to call Fritz. No written record of any of her doings, or her information, could be kept longer than a day. Above all, under no circumstances must she ever show even the slightest reaction to any sight that might greet her on these trips.
- She went, and she brought the prisoner home.
Having succeeded with this ruse
Deception
Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, bad faith, and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth . Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand. It can employ distraction, camouflage or concealment...
on her first attempt, she continued rescue work for two more years. In order to have a cover-up office from which to do her work, and to provide a legitimate front for getting people out of Germany, she took a volunteer position with the vice-president of the Jewish Community, whom she calls "Mr. Gross" in her book. She worked in the Passports Office, on "the most hopeless" cases. In addition to working out passport issues for people and enabling many Jews to leave the country, she continued her trips to the camps, ultimately securing the release of 412 people before the devastating events of Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht, also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, and also Reichskristallnacht, Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom or series of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria on 9–10 November 1938.Jewish homes were ransacked, as were shops, towns and...
(November 9, 1938).
Kristallnacht and after: late 1938 and 1939
After Kristallnacht, when more than 200 synagogues all over Germany—including Ilse's beloved "House"—were torched and destroyed, the situation worsened dramatically. By 1939 the Jewish population of Berlin, which had numbered 160,000 in 1933, had dwindled to 75,000. Trips to the camps were out of the question, but Ilse continued helping Jews leave the country legally. She kept in contact with "Fritz", and when the Gestapo began interviewing people planning to leave Germany in order to try to prevent them from leaving, he found a way to warn her. Finally, very reluctantly, Ilse realized that she, along with her family, needed to leave Germany. They left separately: first her father, in March 1939, then her husband, then Ilse and her son Manfred.Five days before Ilse's planned departure, her mother was summoned to the Gestapo on Alexanderplatz
Alexanderplatz
Alexanderplatz is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin, near the Fernsehturm. Berliners often call it simply Alex, referring to a larger neighborhood stretching from Mollstraße in the northeast to Spandauer Straße and the City Hall in the southwest.-Early...
. Ilse went in her stead. (Once again, her acting past unexpectedly surfaced: the younger of the two interrogators recognized her.) After her mother's situation was clarified, Ilse made a near-fatal mistake: she mentioned her own impending departure. Questioning ensued, and, having nothing to lose, Ilse spoke quietly and openly. She spoke of living in fear since Kristallnacht, and of the need to live without such fear. Then she talked about presenting flowers to the Emperor at the age of six, about Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication and flight from Germany on November 9, 1918, and about Kristallnacht, which happened exactly twenty years after the Emperor's flight (November 9, 1938). One of her two interrogators broke down sobbing. She was allowed to leave the office, and three days later, she and Manfred left for England. After a brief stop there, they sailed from Southampton on the SS Deutschland
SS Deutschland (1923)
SS Deutschland Sometimes called Deutschland IV to distinguish from others of the name was a 21,046 gross registered ton German HAPAG ocean liner which was sunk in a British air attack in 1945, with great loss of life....
on August 4, 1939, arriving in the U.S. on August 11.
Life in the United States
After she left Germany Ilse's life was only slightly less remarkable than it had been in Germany.(much needs to be added here)
In her later years she moved to Boston, and then to New Hampshire, where she worked as an auctioneer. She died in Boston in 1970 and is buried in Gilford, New Hampshire in the Smith Meeting House cemetery.
Recognition
Ilse's work extracting prisoners from the concentration camps has not received much public recognition. A notable exception to this is the 1955 episode of the American television program This is Your LifeThis Is Your Life
This Is Your Life is an American television documentary series broadcast on NBC, originally hosted by its producer, Ralph Edwards from 1952 to 1961. In the show, the host surprises a guest, and proceeds to take them through their life in front of an audience including friends and family.Edwards...
, featuring Ilse and in particular her rescue work. On that program she was reunited with her father, Magnus Davidsohn, who had been living in England since he left Germany in 1939.
Writings by Ilse Stanley
See a particularly nice Amazon customer review.-
- Reprinted in November/December 1992 issue, vol. 264:6. }}
Further reading
- Weimar RepublicWeimar RepublicThe Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
(historical background on Germany between 1916 and 1933) - Shandler, Jeffrey: While America Watches: Television and the Holocaust in the United States, from 1945 to the Present. New York, NY: Columbia University (Dissertation), 1995