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Wilfrid Berthold Jacob Israel (11 July 1899 – 1 June 1943) was an Anglo-German businessman and philanthropist, born into a wealthy Anglo-German Jewish family, who was active in the rescue of Jews from Nazi Germany, and who played an important role in the Kindertransport. Described as "gentle and courageous" and "intensely secretive", Wilfrid Israel avoided public office and shunned publicity, but had, according to his biographer Naomi Shepherd, an "almost hypnotic" ability to influence friends and colleagues. Martin Buber described him as "a man of great moral stature, dedicated to the service of others". He was killed when his civilian passenger plane, ''en route'' from Lisbon to Bristol, was shot down by a Luftwaffe fighter patrol over the Bay of Biscay. ==Biography== Wilfrid Israel's family owned Israel's Department Store in Berlin, one of the largest and oldest stores in pre-World War II Germany. From early in the Nazi period, Wilfrid Israel used the business as a base from which to engineer the release of prisoners from German concentration camps: many in the Nazi leadership had accounts at the store and were never charged. Israel also financed the emigration of his Jewish employees (roughly a third of the staff) by paying them two years salary at the time they left Germany. Philanthropy was only a small part of his rescue activities. Though arrested and beaten, and followed on his journeys abroad by the Gestapo, he attempted through influential contacts in Britain, to gain admission to transit camps in Britain for Jews released from the camps; eight thousand young men were saved in this way. He also lobbied the Foreign Office directly for this purpose through visits to the British embassy (recorded in the British National Archives). Less officially, he formed a working partnership with Frank Foley, the British intelligence agent who was Passport Officer at the British consulate in Berlin, vouching for the characters of Jews in line to emigrate, while warning Foley of German agents who attempted to infiltrate. Wilfrid Israel played a role in the Kindertransport, the rescue of ten thousand German Jewish children after the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. By this time, most of the Jewish leadership had been arrested, and Israel took over the running of the Hilfsverein, the German Jewish welfare and emigration organisation established at the turn of the century. He urged the rescue of children without parents to the Anglo Jewish leadership, which organised a deputation to the British prime minister; but in the aftermath of the pogrom, no Anglo Jew was prepared to visit Germany, and the British government was initially dubious about the willingness of parents to part with their children. But a Quaker delegation, all of whose members had previously worked with Wilfrid Israel on relief matters (a link going back to the post World War I era) was sent out, and directed by Israel and, together with the German women's organisation the Frauenbund, met with the parents and provided the British government with the necessary reassurance. The Israel firm, the largest department store in Berlin, was first vandalised, then taken over by the Nazis, after a forced sale at a fraction of its worth, and Wilfrid Israel left Germany, but returned on the eve of war to organise the despatch of the last contingent of children, only leaving when warned that his arrest was imminent. An example of Wilfred Israel's foresight and compassion is that he arranged to give money and other support to many employees of the Israel firm to aid them to flee the country, many ultimately to America 〔Private Communication from one such high-level employee.〕 Settling in London, he first worked with Bloomsbury House, the organisation dealing with German Jewish refugees interned as 'enemy aliens'. In 1941, he became research assistant on Germany to a Royal Institution of International Affairs committee based at Balliol College, Oxford, now working for the Foreign Office, and at the same time advised the Refugee Department of the F.0. on movements of refugees throughout Europe. Among his papers from that period are those dealing with the question of German resistance to Hitler (which he dismissed, despite his friendship with Adam von Trott, one of its members).〔("Guide to the Papers of the Israel Family 1814–1996" ), AR 25140, Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, retrieved September 6, 2006.〕 Israel was a descendant on his English mother’s side of the first Chief Rabbi of Britain. Biographers describe him as an elegant, elusive figure most famously inspiring the character ''Bernhard Landauer'' in Christopher Isherwood’s celebrated novel Goodbye to Berlin. He figures prominently in his own right in the autobiographical Christopher and His Kind, by the same author. He was a friend of Albert Einstein, the philosopher Martin Buber, and Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of the state of Israel. In his post-World War I refugee work, he was in contact with the British Quakers. His Anglo Jewish connections included Herbert Samuel, previously Home Secretary in the British government and leader of the British Liberal Party. These contacts were valuable in his later rescue missions. Brenda Bailey, daughter of a British Quaker mother and a German Quaker father, wrote: "After Kristallnacht, leadership was again shown by the Jewish businessman Wilfrid Israel, who contacted the Council for German Jewry in London, informing them that extraordinary measures must now be taken to save at least the children". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wilfrid Israel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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