Every morning in 1936, Anne Forchheimer would bicycle to school, over a bridge in the German town of Coburg. She tried not to notice the signs of hate she passed along the way. Hate for Jews and the call for their removal from German society. German law had forbidden Jewish students from attending public schools. Anne’s destination on this November morning, as it had been for the last 18 months, was a special school for Jewish children.
On this day, however, Anne was met outside of her new school by two men. Towering over her in SS uniforms, they sternly commanded her to “go home. … There’ll be no school today for Jew pigs.”
She rode back to her home, where she was greeted by two more SS recruits, who marshaled her family into a town square. There, the other 40 Jewish families of Coburg were huddled together. Soon it was announced that women and children were to return home, while the men and boys had to remain. Fortunately, Anne’s father was a traveling salesman and escaped this first foray into what became the early days of The Final Solution.
Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, exploded soon after, and as the shards of glass from broken windows lay in the streets and Jewish homes and businesses burned, Coburg’s remaining Jewish men were marched to a school gymnasium as the townsfolk yelled and jeered, “Burn them!” Later that evening, Anne was entrusted with bringing some sandwiches to their father, who this time had been captured.
“Children were not being physically attacked, so my mother was sent to where her father was being held,” Anne’s daughter, Rachel Green, said. “When she found him huddled against a wall, my mother hugged him, and I remember her telling me that this was the first time she had ever seen a man cry. After that, my mother would not see her father again until she was the last child at Victoria Station in London to be picked up, more than six months later.”
The handwriting on the wall was scrawled in red paint, and it became glaringly obvious to Jewish families in Germany that the best hope for their young children lay in one word: escape.
Anne’s journey would begin soon after that night, as thousands of German Jewish families desperately searched for an escape route for their children.
Five days after Kristallnacht, a delegation of British Jewish and Quaker leaders appealed to Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of the United Kingdom, urging the British government to take in unaccompanied Jewish children. Debate on this issue ensued at the highest levels of government, and it was later decided that the government would waive immigration requirements for German Jewish children, including infants to teens up to age 17.
An organization was quickly formed called the Refugee Children’s Movement. An appeal was sent out to British citizens to set up foster homes. There were no requirements other than that the homes be clean and open to receiving these young, innocent refugees. In Germany, a clandestine network of volunteers worked feverishly to prioritize lists of children most in peril. Anne was one of those children, and so, carrying only an identity card and a small valise of clothing and keepsakes, she boarded that train not knowing if she would ever see her family again.
Anne as a child in 1937 in Coburg, Germany. Photo courtesy of Anne Forchheimer
Arriving days later at Victoria Station in London, Anne watched as other children were picked up by either government liaisons, new foster families or, if lucky, by their own parents who had escaped Germany. Soon, all the children had left and Anne stood alone in the vast London train station.
Suddenly, Anne turned to see her father running to her. He had escaped capture and gained entry to England at the last minute.
Green concluded her mother and grandfather’s story, saying, “My mother never spoke of her journey.”
A few years ago, Green’s brother, the popular entertainment journalist Sam Rubin, traveled to the streets of Coburg from which his mother, Anne Forchheimer Rubin, now deceased, had escaped, to try to understand her roots. “To some degree, my mom has always had this sunny and optimistic side to her. What struck me was how this lovely neighborhood influenced that attitude. They didn’t believe that this could be happening in this place,” Rubin said. “I think that once she was secure, having traveled from London to America, she suppressed this journey and glossed over it. She only came to terms with it later in life. It just seemed to her that this seemingly safe and secure neighborhood could never be torn apart. But it [was].”
Sharon Farber, a celebrated Israeli-born motion picture, television and concert music composer had heard of Anne’s story. Farber’s latest concerto, “Bestemming,” featuring the voice of Holocaust survivor Curt Lowens, was recently performed with the consuls general of Germany and Holland, as well as the Israeli consulate, participating. Farber’s concerto was hailed as “a bridge builder between cultures” and became the basis for the formation of a nonprofit organization called The Bestemming Project, which fights anti-Semitism and oppression through music and the arts.
“When I heard Anne’s story, as told to me by Rachel and Sam,” Farber said, “I was inspired to start work on another classical composition, this time about the Kindertransport and especially about Anne’s unique story, ‘The Last Child at Victoria Station.’ ”
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