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