When an unsung Indian helped Austrian Jews escape the Nazis

“Let me inform you a secret. Your nana (grandfather) helped Jewish households escape the Nazis.”

That single sentence from his mom set Vinay Gupta off on a journey into his grandfather’s previous. What he unearthed was a story extra gripping than fiction: a little-known act of heroism by an Indian businessman who risked the whole lot to avoid wasting strangers in Europe’s darkest hour.

This wasn’t simply compassion; it was logistics, danger, and resolve. Again in India, Kundanlal arrange a companies to make use of Jews, constructed properties to accommodate them – solely to look at the British declare them as “enemy aliens” and detain them as soon as Phrase Struggle Two broke out.

Kundanlal’s life reads like an epic: a poor boy from Ludhiana, married at 13, who bought the whole lot from timber and salt to lab gear and bullock-cart wheels. He additionally ran a clothes enterprise and a matchstick manufacturing unit. He topped his class in Lahore – becoming a member of the colonial civil service at 22, solely to resign from all of it to take part within the freedom motion and a lifetime of constructing factories.

He shook palms with Indian independence chief and later its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and crossed paths with actress Devika Rani on a steamer to Europe.

In A Rescue In Vienna, a household memoir, Gupta uncovers his grandfather’s extraordinary Indian rescue on overseas soil – pieced collectively by means of household letters, survivor interviews, and historic data.

Within the shadow of Hitler’s 1938 annexation of Austria, Kundanlal, a machine software producer from Ludhiana metropolis within the northern state of Punjab, quietly provided Jewish professionals jobs in India to get them life-saving visas. He provided work, offered livelihood and construct properties for these households in India.

Kundanlal rescued 5 households.

Fritz Weiss, a 30-year-old Jewish lawyer, was hiding in a hospital, feigning sickness. Kundanlal was additionally in the identical hospital to get remedy for an sickness.

After Nazis pressured Weiss to scrub the streets exterior his own residence, Kundanlal handed him a lifeline: a job supply on the fictitious “Kundan Businesses.” It bought him a visa to India.

Alfred Wachsler, a grasp woodworker, met Kundanlal whereas bringing his pregnant spouse for assessments. Promised a future in furnishings and a sponsor for emigration, his household grew to become one of many Jewish households to achieve India between January 1938 and February 1939.

Hans Losch, a textile technician, answered Kundanlal’s advert in an Austrian paper for expert staff. Provided a managerial position on the imaginary “Kundan Material Mills” in Ludhiana – with housing, revenue share, and secure passage – he seized the prospect to start out over.

Alfred Schafranek, as soon as proprietor of a 50-employee plywood manufacturing unit, pitched his abilities to Kundanlal and was provided a job in constructing India’s most trendy plywood unit. His total household, together with his mechanic brother Siegfried, was rescued.

And Siegmund Retter, a machine instruments businessman, was among the many first Kundanlal approached. As his enterprise collapsed beneath Nazi rule, Kundanlal started arranging his transfer to India to start out once more.

All of it started with a hospital mattress in Vienna.

Fighting diabetes and hemorrhoids, Kundanlal, then 45, sought new therapies and examine a specialist in Vienna. In 1938, whereas recovering from surgical procedure there, he met Lucy and Alfred Wachsler, a younger couple anticipating their first baby. From them, he realized of rising antisemitic violence and the destruction of Jewish lives.

Over the following few months, he met different males. Inspired by this success, Kundanlal positioned newspaper adverts looking for expert staff prepared to relocate to India. Among the many respondents have been Wachsler, Losch, Schafranek and Retter. Kundanlal provided every a job, monetary ensures, and assist to safe Indian visas.

“A putting side of all of Kundanlal’s elaborate scheming on behalf of those households was how shut mouthed he remained, maintaining appearances of know-how switch to India till the very finish,” Gupta writes.

“He didn’t share his intent or plans with any Indian or British officers. His household realized of his plans solely when he returned house months later.”

In October 1938, Losch grew to become the primary of Kundanlal’s recruits to reach in Ludhiana.

He was welcomed into Kundanlal’s house – however discovered little consolation within the quiet city, writes Gupta. With no Jewish neighborhood, no cultural life, and a struggling material mill, Losch left inside weeks for Bombay (now Mumbai), citing poor working circumstances and little likelihood of revenue. He by no means returned.

Weiss lasted even much less – just below two months. The corporate created for him, Kundan Businesses, by no means took off. He quickly moved to Bombay, discovered work in flooring, and by 1947 had relocated to England.

Regardless of their departures, Kundanlal bore no resentment, writes Gupta.

“My aunt informed me that quite the opposite, Kundanlal had been embarrassed that he couldn’t present a way of life and social setting extra suited to Vienna, and felt that if he had, the 2 males might have stayed on in Ludhiana.”

Not all tales ended this fashion.

Alfred and Lucy Wachsler, with their toddler son, arrived by sea, rail, and highway – lastly stepping off the practice at Ludhiana.

They moved right into a spacious house Kundanlal constructed for them subsequent door to a different, ready for the Schafraneks. Alfred shortly arrange a furnishings workshop, utilizing Burmese teak and native Sikh labour to craft elegant eating units – one in every of which nonetheless survives within the creator’s household.

In March 1939, Alfred Schafranek, his brother Siegfried, and their households arrived from Austria. They launched one in every of India’s earliest plywood factories in a shed behind the 2 properties.

Pushed and exacting, Alfred pushed untrained staff exhausting, decided to construct one thing lasting. Gupta writes, the work was intense, the Punjab warmth unfamiliar, and the isolation palpable – particularly for the ladies, confined principally to home life.

Because the months handed in Ludhiana, the preliminary reduction gave solution to boredom.

The lads labored lengthy hours, whereas the ladies, restricted by language and isolation, stored to family routines.

In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Days later, Britain declared conflict on Germany – the British parliament pulled India into the battle. Over 2.5 million Indians would serve within the conflict, 87,000 by no means returned.

In Ludhiana, the truth of conflict hit quick.

By 1940, new insurance policies ordered all German nationals – Jewish or not – into internment camps.

The Wachsler and Schafranek households have been forcibly relocated to the Purandhar Internment Camp close to Poona (now Pune), housed in naked barracks with kerosene lamps and minimal comforts. They’d dedicated no crime – solely carried the incorrect passport.

Finally, launch grew to become attainable – if they might discover paid work.

Alfred and Siegfried Schafranek secured roles managing a brand new plywood enterprise in Bangalore and moved there with their households, beginning once more. The Wachsler household left the camp in 1942 after Alfred discovered a job in Karachi. The 2 households by no means met once more.

Purandhar Camp closed in 1946, almost a yr after the conflict ended.

In 1948, Alfred Wachsler’s cousin sponsored US refugee visas for the household. That October, they flew out of Karachi, by no means to return to India. The Schafraneks relocated to Australia in 1947 after a profitable plywood enterprise in Bangalore.

Whereas researching the e book, Gupta met Alex Wachsler – whose father, Alfred, had additionally constructed the Burmese teak desk Kundanlal as soon as utilized in his tiny 120 sq ft workplace. (Alfred died in 1973.)

“Regardless of residing in US for the reason that age of 10, and now into his eighties, Alex Wachsler nonetheless pines for his life in India, eats at Indian eating places, delights in assembly Indians and surprises them together with his information of Urdu,” writes Gupta.

Again in Ludhiana, Kundanlal opened a faculty for his daughters at house, quickly increasing it into one in every of Punjab’s oldest colleges – nonetheless working at this time with 900 college students. His spouse, Saraswati, grew more and more withdrawn and battled despair.

Kundanlal and Saraswati had 5 youngsters, together with 4 daughters. In 1965, Saraswati died after a tragic fall from their terrace. She spent her remaining years in silence, emotionally distanced from the household. Kundanlal handed away a yr later, aged 73, from a coronary heart assault.

“The notion of a ‘passive bystander’ was anathema to Kundanlal. If he noticed one thing, or somebody, that required consideration, he attended to it, by no means intimidated by the enormity of the issue,” writes Gupta.

A becoming epitaph for a person whose legacy was not simply enterprise, however quiet defiance, compassion, and conviction.