Marie Schmolka: Czech, UK, Nicholas Winton

The Nicholas Winton story was a joy to write and was well received by the readers. Now we can ask who planned the rescue of Jewish and political refugees from the Nazis in Czechos­lovakia and who involved Nicholas Winton in Britain?

Marie Schmolka

Maria Schmolka Society

Marie Eisner (1890–1940) was born to a non-religious Jewish family in Prague. She was a quiet woman, a social democrat involved in social work and high-level politics. With Hitler’s takeover in neighbouring Ger­many, she coordinated the assistance to refugees from the Nazi regime who sought asylum in Czechoslovakia. Her social democratic links helped her with leading politicians. As a leader of the Jewish women's movement, Eisner became the re­presentative of JOINT and HICEM, two Jewish refugee organisat­ions, and the sole Czechoslovak represent­ative on the League of Nations Commission for Refugees.

Marie Eisner married at 30 and although their short marriage remained child­less, she loved her step-children. After the death of her lawyer-husband Leopold Schmolka, Marie toured the Near East - it was this visit to Pal­es­tine that stirred her Zionist passion. On returning to Prag­ue, Marie joined the Zionist Organisation, WIZO and the Jewish Party, of which she soon was a central fig­ures.

In 1933 she was the founder and president of the National Coor­dinating Committee for Czech Refugees, where her col­l­eagues included Max Brod. This was the organisation that took the central role in the relief campaign for Nazi victims from Germany, both Jews and non-Jews. It was thought she was the moving spirit in the est­ab­lish­ment of the relief committee for the Jews of Carp­ath­ian Ruth­enia, part of the 1st and 2nd Czechos­lov­ak Republic between the wars (and the location of my in-laws’ home).

It must have been a exhausting life for Schmolka, attending the conferences of international comm­ittees in Gen­eva, Paris and London, as well as Jewish con­ferences ded­ic­ated to social and national causes. She visited the areas where refugees huddled, collecting evidence to mobilise public opinion and writing appeals to foreign amb­assadors in Prague and to Jewish agencies abroad.

Originally German Jewish refugees found Czechos­lov­akia welcoming, but they were gradually viewed with suspicion. And other countries refused to offer asylum at all: Schmolka knew this first hand as she was the Czech delegate at the infamous Evian Conf­er­en­ce in July 1938. in France. Even Britain would take only unacc­omp­an­ied children – that way, no criminal foreigner parents would invade their nation.

After the Sept 1938 Munich agreement and the subsequent annexation of the Czech borderlands, the relief organisations in Prague were unable to cope with the large influx of refugees from the occupied Sudet­en­land; both Jews and political oppon­ents of Nazism were flooding in. Her struggle intensified on behalf of Jew­ish refugees who were stranded in no-man's-land, the narrow strip between the 1939 German and Czechoslovak borders.

It was Marie Schmolka’s appeal for help that brought the young Nicholas Winton (1909-2015) to Prague in Dec 1938. For the next three weeks, Winton helped organise the emigration of Czech Jewish children to Great Britain. He returned to Britain in Jan 1939, two months before the occupation, and continued with refugee work. Winton was definitely a hero, but it is clear that other, longer serving volunteers had already worked to save thousands of Jewish and political refugees from the Nazis.

Schmolka's appeals were met by other human­e U.K volunteers eg Doreen Warriner, a representative of the Brit­ish Committee for Czech Refugees. Doreen was monit­or­ed by MI5 between 1938-52 for her remarkable efforts!

When Germany occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Marie Schmolka and her co-workers from the Committee for Refugees were among the first arrested. In the meantime Warriner supported Winton with the vital Kindertransport programme.

The Czech Kindertransport arrived in London, Feb 1939

The Guardian 

Hannah Steiner, president of Czech WIZO, was arrested a day after the German occupation of Prague in March 1939, so Marie Schmolka presented herself to the Gestapo and declared that she was responsible for all the activities of the relief committee. Soon after, Schmolka was imprisoned for two months in the not­or­ious Pan­krác Prison where the Gestapo subjected her to hideous questioning. Schmolka was released only in May 1939, thanks to ongoing protests of the Ministers of the Protect­orate of Bohemia and Moravia.

After her release, Schmolka had the energy to resume her work. But even more unbelievably, in Aug 1939 Adolf Eichmann, the head of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration, sent this Jewish woman to Paris, to demand more efficient Jew­ish emigration!!

Terrified by the outbreak of the WW2, Schmolka moved to London and established herself. She was active on behalf of the Czechoslovak Jewish refugees and exiles, working in Bloomsbury House. This was the former Palace Hotel purchased in Gower St which became the meeting place for the Czech, Zionist and Quaker social workers. Months later in March 1940, Marie Schmolka was dead at 46, having exhausted herself into a fatal heart attack. She wouldn’t take time off work to seek out medical care.

Prominent Zionists and luminaries of the Czech­os­lov­ak­ian government in exile gathered at the Golders Green Cremat­or­ium (no grave) to say farewell to one of the key European organisers of Jewish emigration before and during the early years of WW2. Jan Masaryk, the Czechoslovak foreign minister, made the main speech.

The Czech exile WIZO group changed their name to Marie Schmolka Society and in 1944, published a slim memorial. Now the Marie Schmolka Memorial is collecting information for her memorials - a plaque at her house near Hampstead, a statue in Prague and a prize for historical work addressing female Jewish social workers in the Holocaust.

A plaque at her house in London

honouring the heroine.  Press to expand

The women organisers featured in the cont­emp­orary records, but disappeared from public memory later on. There were monographs of Schmolka's fellow Zionists Felix Weltsch and Max Brod but Schmolka, who saved thousands of lives, was very difficult to trace. Some new information emerged in April 2019, at an Association of Jewish Refugees Conference,  

London. Thank you to the Marie Schmolka Society  and to Anna Hájková, in History Today 2018

Helsinki: fine architecture, coffee & saunas

                      

Finnish National Theatre, opened 1902
Two steeples with pointed terracotta roofs; 3 arched doorways and 5 smaller arches above

Trip Advisor

I don’t like snow, ice or skiing. But Helsinki has been in the top cities in 2025 Global Liveability Index for at least 10 years and was next on my To Do List.  It is also perfect for anyone looking for a cool climate change that offers milder weather for summer travel and nature-based holidays, with 70% of the country being forest and 10% being lakes.

Helsinki (pop 684,589 in 2025). Finland’s southern capital, sits on a peninsula in the Gulf of Finland. Its central avenue, Mannerheimintie, is flanked by institutions including the National Museum, tracing Finnish history from the Stone Age to the present. Also on Mannerheimintie are the imposing Parliament House and Kiasma, a contemporary art museum.

Helsinki Cathedral

ResearchGate

Stunning Helsinki Cathedral is a loved landmark. Built from 1830-52 when Finland was still under Russian rule, it was a tribute to the then-Grand Duke of Finland, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. This notable building is the main Lutheran cathedral for the Diocese of Helsinki with a rich early C19th history. Designed by Carl Ludvig Engel in the Neoclassical style, see the distinctive green dome surrounded by 4 smaller domes, creating a striking silhouette. Engel intended the cathedral to be the focal point of his design for Senate Square, with other buildings adding to its grandeur. Note the symmetry with colonnades and pediments adorning each arm. The cathedral was called St Nicholas' Church until Finland gained independence in 1917. 

Uspenski Cathedral, ornate Russian iconostasis

The other great cathedral is the Uspenski Cathedral near the south harbour. This ornate red brick cathedral is the largest orthodox church in Western Europe, and is even more lavish on the inside. This redbrick cathedral dates back to 1868, well located to overlook the harbour.

Huvilakatu beautiful street

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Finland’s capital Helsinki is artistic, functional in design and naturally cool. Huvilakatu, with charming and colourful two-storey homes, is known as Villa St. This picturesque street, c320 meters long, is lined with beautiful Art Nouveau buildings from the early C20th. Huvilakatu is a very beautiful street.

The Finns are the world’s biggest consumers of coffee so its café culture would be perfect for me; a perfect few days for couples. Drink great amounts of coffee since Helsinki’s coffee culture is typically Scandinavian in beautifully designed cafés. Ex-Swedish, the favourite Helsinki café is Johan & Nyström, a fine heart of the city’s food culture. Slow roasted, sustainable, carefully chosen beans, passionate baristas also provide a mix of traditional Scandi treats eg cinnamon buns in a perfectly chic environment.

Book some weeks ahead for Grön Restaurant. This tiny restaurant in the city centre focuses on creating Scandinavian style plant-based food from seasonal, local and wild produce. The four-course set menu includes everyone’s favourite sweets - grilled strawberries with granita, meringue, fennel leaves and caramelised strawberry milk. Become obsessed with rooftop bars while travelling, viewing the city from above, with a cocktail in hand. The best place to do this is Ateljée Bar. The drinks are more exp ensive than the bars below, but the view is special.

 Market Hall

 My Thousand Miles

Helsinki’s famous Central Market Square/Kauppatori sits in the South Harbour at the end of the Esplanade Park, facing the Baltic Sea. The traditional fresh food sells next to souvenirs and homemade crafts. And visit the Fortress of Suomenlinna, a short ferry ride from the mainland.

Temppeliaukio Church is in the heart of Helsinki, and a popular tourist attraction. Built directly into a solid rock, Temppeliaukio’s nick is Rock Church. The interior still has rugged, rocky walls and a stunning copper dome roof surrounded by a thin row of skylight windows, distilling the light beautifully around the alter. Due to the great acoustics of the church, many concerts are held here.

National Gallery

Impressionistsgallery

The Finnish National Gallery, which opened in 1888, now has a collection that includes 43,000+ works of art and archival material. The State-owned collection is part of Finland’s national heritage. My favourite Scandinavian artist was Norwegian Edvard Munch who was born in 1863; his works often explored themes of love, death and human emotions. And look for Munch’s Self-portrait and Swedish Anders Zorn’s Girls Bathing in the Open Air 1890. Finnish artist Albert Edelfelt’s Conveying the Child’s Coffin 1879 was emotional, as expected.

Kiasma Contemporary Art Gallery

Tripadvisor

The mission of Kiasma Gallery is to collect and research contemporary art, so I didn’t visit. But others loved the 8,800 art works acquired by Kiasma which are part of the Finnish National Gallery collection, a significant element of Finnish cultural heritage.

Löyly is an impressive public sauna and restaurant that sits on the Baltic Sea c2km outside the city centre. For €19/person book 2.5 hours of pleasure, going between different saunas, jumping into the Baltic to cool off, and sitting around on the deck sipping drinks. Once given a towel and a locker, women and men are then split into different changing/shower rooms to get changed. Then they come together for a choice of three different types of facilities: continuously heated sauna, once-heated sauna and traditional smoke sauna.

Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia

Françoise Fren­k­el's vital WW2 memoirs

Françoise Fren­k­el (1889-1975) was born to Jewish parents in Piotr­ków Poland, near Lodz. After an introduction saying how she became fascinated with books as a child, she continued with her studies at the Sorbonne and did an apprenticeship with an anti­qu­arian bookseller. Not surprisingly, she soon developed a profess­ional passion for literature, especially French literature.

Francoise Frenkel, Rien où poser sa tête

Published 1945

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Germany In 1921 Françoise set up the first French-language bookshop in Berlin, La Maison du Livre, recognising the appetite for French culture in Berlin after WW1. Her business successfully appealed to classy people: diplomats, aut­hors, artists. In the heady years of the Weimar Republic (1918-33) and after, her bookshop became a cultural centre in the city.

She worked with her Russian-born husband Simon Raich­enstein until 1933. Ident­ity papers were denied him by French auth­orities who is­s­ued him with a deportation order. He was taken to Drancy detention camp near Paris and killed in Ausch­witz in July 1942.

Frenkel’s dream job lasted until 1939 but the end was seen with the descent into Naz­ism, racial gen­o­cide and the start of WW2. Nazi officers & Hitler Youths crept over the streets, destroying Jewish-run businesses, smashing windows and burning synagog­ues. Krist­allnacht Nov 1938 was the worst.

Françoise had to escape to France, just before war broke out. Only days after her depart­ure from Germany, Nazi Germany bomb­ed Paris, causing terrible destruction. Frenkel would have stayed in Paris but she was forced to keep mov­ing. In the meantime Mar­shal Philippe Petain’s regime remained in Vichy as the nominal gov­ern­ment of France, op­erating as a client state of Nazi Germ­any from Nov 1942 on.

Françoise and many other city residents sought refuge in the loveliest parts of France - first Avignon (Sth), then Nice (S.E). Frenkel her­self was constantly moved from safe house to safe house, from refugee hotel to messy refugee hotel. Nice was overrun with ref­ug­ees who were hiding in poor living cond­itions; families were split up. Françoise understood that she surv­ived only because some stran­g­ers risked their lives to protect her. She escaped many crises with Nazi police officers rounding up Jews for concentration camps, but informants were clearly everywhere.

Just as it was looking as if most non-Jews were either brutal them­selves or uncaring about Jews, her memoir became a tap dance bet­ween acknowledging human cruelty and being in awe of human kind­ness. In fact her most valuable insights were into the behaviour of French people specifically under Occupation in Vichy France.

Deportation of Foreign Jews from Paris 

to Drancy detention camp.

Frenkel conveyed a huge debt of gratitude in her work. I would not have. My grandfather searched Eastern Europe for his sister, from the last letter he received (1942) until his 1971 death. My father-in-law searched for his brother, sister-in-law and 6 nieces/nephews after his liberation from Ukraine; all had been exterm­in­ated except one child.

Switzerland  From Dec 1942 on Françoise attempted to reach neutral Switzerland, her bids for safety being des­perate. In her book, she detailed how in 1943 she finally smug­gled herself across the border from Haute-Savoie. Eventually her memoir Rien où poser sa tête/No Place to Lay One’s Head was written on the shores of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland and published in 1945 by Geneva-based publish­ers Jeheber.

What happened in Françoise Frenkel's subsequent life? She returned to live in Nice and died there in 1975. But not even a photo of the author exists. Very limited extra informat­ion came from a list of persons who were given per­mis­sion to cros­s­ the border into Switz­erland during WW2 and who obtained a resid­ence permit there. Those documents are now in State Archives of Gen­eva.

After the 1945 publication, the memoir was largely forgotten until recently when a copy was accidentally discovered in Nice. In the preface of the book’s newest publication, French novelist/Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano added to the story of refugees fleeing terror the world over.

Of course Frenkel’s book reminded me of Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, the girl who survived in hiding in Amsterdam until the family was deported to death camps in Poland in 1944. Miraculously her father Otto Frank survived and miraculously he found Anne’s diary. And Catherine Taylor  added another comparison - Irène Némirovsky’s unfin­ish­ed novel Suite Française, which was miraculously discovered by her daughter, decades after Némirovsky perished at Aus­chwitz-Birkenau. Like Rien où poser sa tête, these two books works were lucky to be published. But unlike Frenkel, Anne Frank became a well known sym­bol of the Holocaust.

Division of France between German Occupied Zone and Vichy Free Zone

highlighting Paris, Drancy, Nice (N) in France and Geneva (G) in Switzerland

Frenkel’s quest for refuge in war-torn Europe reminds us all of our contemp­orary debates reg­arding refugees. Like the author back in WW2, many unlucky citizens in the modern world need to flee starv­ation, war or ethnic oppression. No country wants them today, so fleeing is still an alien­ating, unforgiving journey of necessity. The story today is as tragic today as it was when my own husband was carried over the mountains between home (Czechoslovakia) and the DP camps in Austria after the war. Worse, probably.

 

No Place To Lay one's Head

by Francoise Frenkel

translated by Stephanie Smee, 2019

Amazon

Bookshop in Berlin (alternative title) by Francoise Frenkel

Booktopia

Penguin Random House's Vintage published a translation of Frenkel’s French book, Rien où poser sa tête in 2017 as A Bookshop in Berlin. Hopefully the orig­in­al style was capt­ured in English by Australian translator Steph­an­ie Smee. For a detailed review, read Brigette Manion in Asymptote.

Meret Oppenheim serious, sexy, famous art

Meret Oppenheim, Object,1936
Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Meret Oppenheim (1913-85) was born in Berlin. Her father Dr Erich Opp­enheim, a German psychoanalyst, was conscripted into the army when WW1 started. So Meret and her mum moved to live with the maternal family in Swit­zerland where Meret greatly admired her aunt’s devotion to art and modern life­style. After the war, Dr Oppenheim opened a medical practice in the southern German town of Steinen and sent for his family. Meret began to write down her dreams, inspired by her father who regularly attended Carl Jung’s seminars in Zurich. Throug­hout her life she used Jung's analytical approach, to address basic life questions.

Soon she was introduced to art works of various styles eg Expressionism, Fauv­ism and Cubism. Mer­et disliked the concept of “fem­inine art” and adopt­ed Jung's ideal, “and­rogynous creativity”. And Paul Klee’s work in the 1929 re­t­ro­spective at Kunsthalle Basel provided an­other strong abst­ract­ion­ist in­fluence

In 1932 at 18, Oppenheim moved to Paris from Basel and moved into the Académie de la Grande Chaum­ière. Her first Paris studio in Mont­par­nasse Hotel was where she created paintings & drawings. Then she met Hans Arp and Alberto Giacom­etti who visited her studio to saw her work. They invit­ed her to part­ic­ipate in Paris’ Surreal­ist exhibit­ion in Salon des Sur­indép­end­ants in Oct-Nov.

Happy to pose for photog­r­aph­ers, Man Ray’s popular photo ser­ies depicted Meret’s per­s­onal stance on femininity, and her care in exposing it.  In his photos, she posed grace­ful­ly eg Meret Oppenheim at the Printing Wheel (1933). 

Meret posing for Erotique Voilée by Man Ray, 1933,
Museum of Fine Arts Houston
dailyartmagazine

Op­p­en­heim later met André Breton and socialised at the Café de la Place Blanche with Surreal­ists. She experimented with Surrealism, seeking approval for her life­style. She was scep­tic­al of any concrete ideology, and Sur­realism al­l­owed her to experiment. But whereas other Surreal­ists used dreams to un­lock the sub­conscious, Oppen­heim used art and dreams in their sub­con­sciousness forms. Meeting Breton and his fr­iends, Oppenheim's circle joined other Surreal­ists eg Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Francis Picabia and Man Ray. Man Ray was asked to exh­ib­it her best work at NY’s Museum of Mod­ern Art (1936), hanging along­side Paris and New York artists, includ­ing Sal­vador Dalí and Giacom­met­ti.

In 1936, Meret Oppenheim had her first solo exhibition at Basel’s Gal­er­ie Schulthess. Her best known artwork was Object-Breakfast in Fur (1936), con­sisting of a teacup, saucer and spoon, covered with fur from a Chinese gazelle. The hol­low round cup suggested wealthy female genit­al­ia; the phallic shaped spoon further eroticised the hairy obj­ect.  Meret was en­couraged by a con­versation she had about fur items with Pablo Pic­asso and his lov­er Dora Maar in Café Deux Magots. Obj­ect-Breakfast in Fur was quickly bought by Alfred Barr for the MoMA New York collection and was included in the mus­eum's 1st Surreal­ist exhib­it­ion, Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism (1936-7).

Meret Oppenheim's My Nursemaid, 1936

Surrealist sculpture high-heeled shoes, bound by string & on a metal platter.
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Forbes

In 1937 Oppenheim returned to Basel, struggling with her artistic de­v­el­op­ment. She us­ual­ly worked episodically and sometimes destroyed her own work. So she took a career-break in 1939, af­ter a Paris Exhibition at Galerie René Dr­ouin with Max Ernst.

And see Meret’s furniture. Her whimsical Table with Bird’s Feet based on birds legs, on display at a fantasy furniture exhibition at Place Vend­ôme in 1939, was praised by the leaders of Italian design in Mil­an, and has now become an model of stylish interior design.

Bird Feed table, 1939

1stdibs

When her father was unemployed in 1939, Meret needed to do con­ser­v­ation for financial and emotional relief. She ret­ur­n­ed to Basel, train­ing as an art conservator to ensure her financial stability. But this marked a creative crisis that lasted for years. Although she had some con­­tact with her Par­isian friends, she created little art and dest­roy­ed much of what she had. In 1949, Oppenheim married Wolfgang La Roche and moved with him to Bern.

In Basel she became a mem­ber of Gruppe 33 and participated in their shows in Kunst­museum Basel. But Oppenheim was strugg­ling and did not present any public art exhibitions till the 1950s. Then she re­verted to with her new works to her original style and earlier creations. Oppenheim befriended the direct­or of the Kuns­t­hall Bern; his exhibitions helped her explore internat­ion­al arts.

In 1956, Oppenheim designed the costumes and masks for Picasso’s play Le Désir attrapé par la queue in Berne. In 1959, she organised a Spring Banquet in Bern for friends at which food was served on a naked woman. It caused contro­versy, with Oppenheim accused of treating the female body as dinner. With her perm­is­sion, Andre Br­eton restaged the perform­ance later that year at the op­ening of the Ex­pos­

it­ion inter­nat­ionale du Surrealisme, at the Galerie Cordier Paris. But Oppenheim felt her orig­inal aims were lost.

Surrealism was changing. In the 1960s Oppenheim felt she belonged with the younger, post-war generation and so she dist­anced herself from the older Surr­ealists. True to herself, she undertook fresh pic­torial lan­g­uage and in 1968, had a solo exhibition at Galerie Martin Krebs, Bern. Her pieces were everyday items that al­l­uded to female sexuality and ex­ploitation by men, perhaps confronting life and death. In this int­imate bronze sculpture (1977), folded layers ?referenced female curves.

Twist weave brooch by Meret Oppenheim, 1985

perfold

In 1982 Oppenheim won the Berlin Art Prize! That was the year that Meret Oppenheim: Defiance in the Face of Freedom was publ­ished, and she was commissioned to make a public fountain by Berlin's art commission. Her fountain was cast in 1983, receiving mixed reviews. In 1983 Oppen­heim was in a touring exhibition through the Goethe Ins­titute in Italy. In 1984 she had a solo exhibition in Kunsthalle Bern along with Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris. International recognition.. at last! She passed away in 1985.

Meret Oppenheim: My Exhibition will move to the Menil Coll­ection in Hous­ton Texas (till Sep 2022), before moving to MoMA in New York (from Oct 2022). The 200 ob­jects started from her smart 1930s Paris debut: from abstract works to jew­­ellery, paint­ings, sculptures and collages in Bern. See the catalogue.