A Berlin couple who dedicated themselves to spiriting Jewish families and political dissidents out of Nazi Germany via a clandestine network disguised as an English-language tutoring service have been honoured in the German capital for the first time since their story fell into obscurity half a century ago.
A commemorative plaque was installed on Thursday by Berlin authorities at Pariser Strasse 54 in the Wilmersdorf district, outside the former home of Max and Malwine Schindler. Their legacy was rediscovered two years ago through a cache of letters and photographs found in a garden shed in Australia.
When Max – unrelated to the industrialist Oskar Schindler portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 Hollywood drama Schindler’s List – lost his job at Neukölln city council after the Nazi’s banning of the Social Democratic party (SPD) in 1933, he concentrated his mind on setting up an underground network to help those suffering Nazi persecution escape Germany.
The plaque on Pariser Strasse 54 in Berlin, honouring Max and Malwine Schindler. Photograph: Philip Oltermann/The Guardian
Having taught himself English while recovering from a shrapnel wound in the first world war, Max set up a language tutoring service as a cover for dashing around Berlin to visit Jewish and politically suspect families in their apartments.
Lancashire-born Evelyn Parker, a former pen-friend of the Schindlers’ son, Rudolf, was recruited as a conversation coach to assist with the operation. “In January 1934 I had an SOS,” Parker wrote in her memoir. “Max was starting a language school and an English library and needed my help.”
“So, off I set … The bulk of our students were prospective refugees, most Jews, we taught them the requisite amount of English … and did anything else for them we could.”
For Jewish Germans, who were subject to growing waves of repression and violence after 1933, emigration to countries like Britain or the US was legal but highly complicated, requiring proof of independent wealth or a guarantor who would financially support them at the other end.
The language-learning cover allowed the Schindlers to link their students into progressive circles in the UK. The couple were active members of the SPD and had built up contacts within its British political equivalent, the Labour party, and associated groups. In 1937, for example, stalwarts of the co-operative movement in Darlington provided board and lodging for the teenager Klaus Wilczynski, whose mother had sought Max’s help.
Max and Malwine Schindler and Evelyn Parker with friends in 1930. Photograph: FRANCES NEWELL/SUPPLIED)
After the Nazis began to forcibly remove Jewish citizens from Berlin in 1941, the Schindlers began to illegally shelter families who had not managed to leave Germany in their spacious and labyrinthine apartment on Pariser Strasse, to hide them from the Gestapo. They cooked food for others.
“Your attitude towards the Nazi system and your convictions led you to courageously demonstrate willingness to help us when most other ‘friends’ failed to do so,” Ernst Lachmann, a Jewish dentist, later wrote in a condolence letter to Malwine upon Max’s death in 1948. “Your apartment was a refuge for us; we were able to flee there and be saved. Malicious neighbours and housemates didn’t deter you from appearing with us in your air raid cellar.”
The Schindlers’ legacy was rediscovered two years ago when Frances Newell, the daughter of their former conversation coach Parker, chanced upon a cache of letters and photographs telling of the couple’s endeavours in her garden shed in Victoria, Australia.
Further research by archivists at Berlin’s Silent Heroes memorial centre corroborated the story, leading to the Schindlers being honoured with one of 12 historic plaques the city of Berlin installs on an annual basis.
While the exact number of people saved by the Schindlers is unknown, at least seven people testified after the end of the war that they had been aided by the couple. Their testimonies led to the widowed Malwine being honoured by the Berlin senate as an “unsung hero” in 1963.
In one of the first “culture of remembrance” programmes of the postwar era, Malwine was one of 760 former anti-Nazi activists who were invited to a public ceremony and given some financial support. The lack of a physical monument meant she and the others were soon forgotten, however.
Malwine, who died in 1973, lies buried in an unmarked grave in a Wilmersdorf graveyard. Max’s final resting place is unknown. The Schindlers outlived Rudolf, who was sentenced to forced sterilisation by the hereditary health court in Berlin, for the alleged crime of schizophrenia, and later died in circumstances that remain unclear.“The Schindler story is about friendship, indomitable courage and ingenuity in the face of oppression,” said Newell. “It provides a window into the past and affirms the possibility of ordinary people making a difference.”