War’s Turmoil : Survivor Recounts Being Whisked From Germany as Boy

Save for a now obscure act of the British government, Ernie Green, like Anne Frank, probably would have died in a concentration camp.

But instead of being another number in Adolf Hitler’s “final solution,” Green became one of 10,000 Jewish youths known as “Kindertransports” who were spirited out of Europe to the relative safety of Great Britain just before World War II.

Though spared the Nazi horror, the multilingual German native nevertheless had to survive an extraordinary odyssey of internment camps, a stint in the Australian army and time as a volunteer in medical experiments before the end of history’s deadliest war.

On Monday, the 50th anniversary of the Third Reich’s surrender, the 71-year-old Leisure World resident weaved pieces of his moving story into a guided tour of an exhibit entitled “Anne Frank in the World: A Lesson in Tolerance.” The display has already been viewed by thousands of Orange County students and features 500 photographs and commentary about the young victim of the Holocaust and the rise of Nazism.

“If we didn’t talk about this once in a while, you would never know the story,” said Green, addressing eighth-graders from Orange View Junior High School in Anaheim. “It’s being done again today in Yugoslavia and Africa. We haven’t learned that much, I’m afraid.”

Green poignantly spoke of his early years growing up in Hamburg, where he was separated from his family at age 13 and forced to live in an orphanage until leaving for England in 1938. Green told the students that Jews were made scapegoats by Nazis who blamed them for the country’s disastrous defeat in World War I and subsequent severe economic decline.

“The climate of hate was so enormous, the propaganda was so enormous,” said Green, whose father was a decorated German veteran in World War I and who later died in a Latvian death camp. “Everything was anti-Jew. Anything that happened, they blamed the Jews.”

The Orange View students, who recently finished reading Anne Frank’s diary, found Green’s recollections of living under Nazi rule horrifying but engrossing. Students were especially moved by Green’s description of the palpable fear that Jewish youths endured during the 1930s in Nazi Germany.

Encouraged by the government, uniformed gangs of Hitler Youth frequently targeted Jewish youngsters for beatings, Green said.

“I thought that part was scary and I was thinking, ‘What if that was me?’ ” said Felicia Evans, 14, of Anaheim, one of a dozen students touring the Anne Frank exhibit. “I thought I had it hard today until I listened to (Green), but you listen to what happened back then and it’s terrible.”

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Kenny McDonald also reacted with amazement to Green’s story.

“How can kids walk around and just beat people up?” asked the 13-year-old from Anaheim after Green’s visit. “I don’t think I would be able to handle that, what he went through.”

But Green’s brief version to students Monday barely delved into a life that was often threatened by death during the war. After arriving into the apparent safety of England, Green was again deported like thousands of other “Kindertransport” children. As German armies swept across Europe, British authorities became increasingly distrustful of the new arrivals and dispatched them to Canada and Australia.

During their rough sea voyage to Australia, Green said, about 70 men and boys were locked into a ship with little food and water and poor sanitary conditions. But it was the German torpedo that glanced off his ship that proved most memorable.

Green was learning to play the card game bridge as the weapon struck the vessel. Green and other others tried to pretend that death was not at hand.

“We sat there playing cards,” said Green, who remembers the torpedo hitting the hull, harmlessly as it turned out. “If you are going to die, you might as well go in an enjoyable moment.”

Once in Australia, Green was immediately placed in an internment camp similar to what Japanese Americans were forced into by the United States government, he said. After two years, authorities admitted they had made a mistake by imprisoning the Europeans, all of whom despised the Nazi regime, Green said.

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In his late teens, Green sought to enlist in a combat unit to fight the Nazis, but was repeatedly turned down because of his age and nationality. For nearly two years, Green was consigned instead to loading munitions onto Australian trains.

Desperate to contribute to the war effort in a more meaningful way, Green volunteered to be a human subject in medical experiments. He contracted malaria, which had claimed thousands of Allied lives during the war. It took the youth nearly six months to recover from the disease that left him at times near deafness, blindness and delirium.

But Green said he still vividly recalls when, as he lay recuperating in a hospital ward with 200 men, he learned of the final defeat of his native country on an early Australian morning 50 years ago.

“Someone came in and blew a whistle and said the war in Europe was over,” said Green, whose accent still gives away his German ancestry and his years in Australia. “And then in the dark somebody recited the Lord’s Prayer in that hospital. It was beautiful, you could have cried.”

Next Tuesday, Green will deliver a lecture about Kindertransport at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. He will be joined by Leisure World resident Lisa Greenberg, who also was saved by the program, and Drs. Alice and Kurt Begel of Orange, former English residents who cared for some of the Kindertransport children.

The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Library Annex of the museum, 856 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach. The Anne Frank exhibit runs through June 20 at the same location. For more information, call (714) 640-6593.

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Docent’s Tale

Ernie Green is a volunteer at the Anne Frank exhibit in Newport Beach. His own life reads like a book:

* Age: 71

* Birthplace: Hamburg, Germany

* Home: Leisure World, Laguna Hills

* Teen years: Spirited out of Germany before World War II; deported to Australia where he survived two years in internment camp; served in Australian army and volunteered as malaria experiment subject

* Family: Wife, Geraldine, and three children

* Career: Retired from insurance brokerage after 30 years

* Attitude: “If we didn’t talk about this once in a while, you would never know the story. It’s being done again today in Yugoslavia and Africa. We haven’t learned that much, I’m afraid.”

Source: Times reports