The Improbable Escape of Two Young Brothers from Nazi Germany – A HOLOCAUST STORY: GEORGE AND ALEXANDER TSCHERNY
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In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, in December 1938, two young Jewish boys, ages 12 and 14, boarded a train out of Berlin for Holland, to escape the escalating brutality against Jews in Germany. Arriving in Nijmegen, Holland without documents or family, George and Alexander Tscherny were placed with a family by the Dutch Committee for Jewish Refugees, waiting to be granted asylum from the Queen and then dispatched to a refugee camp.
When Germany invaded Holland in May 1940, the Tscherny brothers were in further peril. Nazis seized the property housing the refugee children and they were shunted to an orphanage in Amsterdam. Meanwhile, their parents had successfully fled Germany and were able to provide entry visas to the USA, but the boys had to return to Nazi Germany to obtain transit visas to reach Lisbon, their port to freedom. They left Amsterdam in February 1941 and joined a group of 10 other children who were assembling in Berlin with the same purpose. After several terrifying months, Jewish agencies were ultimately able to secure the necessary approval for their transit visas. In a sealed train, the 12 children departed for Lisbon, where they boarded various ships to the United States. Alex and George were finally able to sail on Alex’s birthday, June 10, 1941, aboard the SS Mouzinho bound for New York.
During George and Alex’s survival quest, numerous organizations responded to their plight. These rescue efforts give us a glimpse of heroic humanity during one of the darkest times in history. The saga of Alex, George, and thousands of other children is a testament to their courage, endurance and determination.
This is a story of the inextinguishable yearning for—
Freedom and Peace
Copyright 2021. Giselle Heimann Ratain. All Rights Reserved.
Video Editing – Family Legacies Videos, Inc.
Production Assistance- Kathleen Atlass
DVD cover design – George Tscherny
Contact us: gigi.hr29@gmail.com,
susan@familylegaciesvideos.com
E All I’m George churny I was born in Hungary Budapest in July 12th 1924 my name is Alexander churny I was born in Berlin Germany this is the story of my escape from Nazi Germany my father medal chy was a soldier in the Russian army in World War I he was taken
Prisoner and wound up in a Hungary where he met my mother bahman and at the end of the war he didn’t go back to Russia but stayed behind and married Bella in 1926 my parents decided to leave Hungary and go to B in Germany the iranic park is that we left Hungary
Because of anti-Semitism and W up in Germany we went to Berlin we stayed at my my mother’s brother Isis Hyman and his wife jeta Hyman it must have been quite an imposition on the family because they had two children of their own my cousins Gad Hyman was probably 3
Years old and C Hyman may have been 10 or so in addition to this while we were there my brother Alex was born June 10 1926 so we were eternally grateful for the Hyman to put us up my memories of that period at the Hyman is of course
Very vague I was 2 years old and my first memories are really where we moved toit was really a sort of workingclass neighborhood we lived in a basement under very poor conditions I amazed in retrospect how my parents managed because my father had no work my mother
Made dresses in Hungary she had been a millonaire so she had a certain amount of talent for using her hands and we some managed to get through by the time I turned six we entered the public school this was the regular Christian public school we stayed there probably
Until 1934 when we all transferred into a school run by the Jewish congregation in Berlin this was at um 58 Klo shasa I did fairly well in all the unimportant subjects in music drawing gym meanwhile Alex had actually gone to another school there’s a picture where he did a schol
House fluke with his classmates one of the interesting things in Moab be was in UA palast Cinema in those days all the movies were called palast and outside that movie house they had hand painted portraits of the movie stars that appeared in it they were fairly large
Full-size faces and they were really the first indication that I took note of that sort of thing they triggered my interest in art and I really began to think in terms of art as possibly that’s what I would like to do when I grow
Up my life as a boy in moabit was fairly circumscribed of course it was the daily event of walking to school in addition to that um on weekends uh my music teacher had asked me to join a Voice Choir that he conducted in a synagogue in
Luta one of the byproducts of going to that synagogue every Friday evening and Saturday morning was that they paid us car fair or something like the equivalent of 60 cents 60 fenic 15 fenic per caride Alex and I who also sang in that choir we used 15
Cents go home Friday evening but the rest we kept which was really our Tash and Guild every Saturday morning after the service we had a very very long walk back to rasa where we moved to since but it was a very interesting walk uh lza was right on the corner of
Poasa which led us to Puta plot POA plot was really sort of the Center of Berlin in those days in terms of hotels in terms of movie theaters and there was a building that caught my interest one of the first contemporary buildings being put up by subsequently very famous
Architect Irish menzone uh the building went up about 1930 and it contained surprisingly the American branch of warw worth and that was our weekly stop because that gave us an opportunity to spend some of the little money that we had gotten I still have little screwdriver
That I bought there at that time and then we continued on past Bor tour R back to our home 67 we moved there it was certainly um a step up in terms of Lifestyle we had one big room which um the family lived and a kitchen very modest by
Today’s standards but it was certainly a an improvement over luasa rasa was actually a little closer to where the hman lived in the perber stasa and across the street from our apartment house which was a typical sort of Berlin apartment house which was built in the 1890s and occupied all of
Berin I went back obviously after the war to look at luas and that existed exactly as I remember it and as it is in the photograph that that I have of a little boy in the courtyard in fact I photographed myself in the same Courtyard when I visited Berlin again in
1970s and nothing had changed uh my first school the Christian School somebody had discovered that I had a certain amount of talent and uh there was an after school drawing class and I was put into that and I participated and there occurred something where I really noticed the first indication of
Anti-Semitism one evening the teacher called me over and said unfortunately you’re going to have to leave the class because you haven’t turned in enough work which of course was not true I turned in my work every afternoon but that was an obvious indication in retrospect um that I was being kicked
Out because I was a Jew except for the little incident of anti-Semitism that I experienced very early I really didn’t suffer from that very much poor economic condition was really worse than the anti-Semitism the kind of people that felt anti-Semitism in Berlin in the mid-30s were really professional people who couldn’t work
People who lost their businesses maybe but actually there were Jewish businesses along Tomas and mo be all the way up to 1930 8 the Turning event there was a shock the morning of November 10 I went off the school that morning without being aware of what had happened during the
Night I arrived at my school the windows were knocked in the doors was closed there was nobody there I went back home got my bicycle and drove to the west where all the damage had been done I witnessed I stood outside um fanog fan and as it was burning and I
Was just like an observer as if this wasn’t even affecting me um and I went on to KU down where the the windows had been broken and that um really um was the incident that um made me realize that there was no future for us in in
Germany um I remember lying on my kitchen floor looking at at Maps um of how they get out of Germany Berlin is fairly up north and so my thinking was always that I was going to sneak onto some kind of farmer truck going to Denmark or something like that uh um
Until one day I received a postcard from friends that we had um a boy and a sister who had escaped into harand and um it was amazing an open postcard they told me where across the border where to go what to do not long there after um I decided that Alex and I
Were going to go a friend of my mothers took us to the railroad station B ofo and it was December 20th and the train that was going to take us to the Dutch border uh was coming from Poland and was running late by the time we got to the Dutch border
There was no way of going across we got off to the station in clav which is is the the last City on the German side people dis dispersed from the Roy station and there we were standing knowing nobody knowing not where to go imagine I was 14 Alex was 12 years old
We’d never been in a hotel in our lives but we started looking for hotel now this is a small town didn’t have big hotels but we came up on a place we rang the bell and asked whether they would have a room for us they said no I don’t
Know whe they really didn’t have the room or whether they knew what we were up to we started walking not knowing really where to go and came to another sort of small hotel and the gentleman said uh can I help you and we said we need a room for tonight
And he looked at us and he said uh where are you going he said we we’re visiting an ant in Holland but he missed the last train he said are you are you Jews and he said yes he said well it’s really against the law to give
You a room but in as much as your young boys I’m going to give you a room don’t tell anybody the next morning we went down for breakfast and there was only one person in dining room he was reading the which was the official Nazi paper
But he greeted us with h Hitler and we’ll we said a h Hitler and had our breakfast we checked out and went to the railroad station and calmly bought a ticket to D in in Holland um nobody asked you for a passport or anything like that we got we got our
Ticket we got on the train it was a very cold snowy day it was a typical railroad car of the 30s where the little compartments Alex I said sit by the window and you look out the window don’t look at anybody just keep looking out the window the other people that came into
The compartment was a farmers woman with two little children and a clergy man it was really in retrospect a scene out of a French movie you know I mean these were people as if they were picked by uh a St photo house you know the train made a stop
Which is the last may have been a village stopped before crossing the border where the train Personnel changes from German to Dutch a an assist off officer comes walking down the hall and thinks I think that we belong to that farmers woman and he only asked for the passport of the
Clergyman there was another stop um where the farmers woman cut off and the s officer uh came walking by and saw that Alex and I were sitting in there and asked for our papers these were SS Storm Troopers black uniform normally uh known to be pretty tough and uh to be feared
So we were a little scared uh we had no ID so because we had no passports we didn’t have anything so they came through and they said the papers and we said what papers he said uh do you have an ID I said no I don’t have an ID where are you
Going I said well I’m being um expected by the committee in that here he said what committee I said well the committee and this went on once or twice and he said don’t let me catch you coming back and close the door and then train went off when we arrived at
N uh we got off the train and there was a passport control and Visa control and uh we said that we didn’t have any anything and they said well you refugees and he said yes so they called a person from the uh committee Jewish Community who would uh re review your background
And make a decision of whether they would or would not uh accept you into AR so they said okay um wait a moment and we’ll make a call to his family and someone will come and piure it it was a very nice family the two daughters and
Very very lovely people they were very friendly they did uh speak German and U gave us dinner and let us stay over overnight and they said U you may have to stay three or four days before the queen is going to uh give us us authorization to let you go and you
Probably will be assigned to a refugee camp two days later um word came that we’d got permission to stay in harand from there we were taken to a town sstar in that town there was a summer camp that was run by a partisan group children in that community
Community could spend the summer there since it was Winter there was nobody in that camp and they generously made it available to German children refugees we arrived there and they were already children from six to 15 I was really one of the older by being 14 the kids were
There from Austria Germany we were put up their fed and were able to go to school the Dutch have a vocational school system that’s very good it’s called the Amar school and I signed up for cabinet making and Alex decided they had a course in house painting we were
Given a bicycle I had to every morning ride to ammer for which is where the school was riding bicycle and Holland is really quite wonderful because their bicycle path everywhere uh the only problem is that many days were raining and you know there’s nothing worse than riding a
Bicycle in the rain um plus the fact that I have no clothing to change to speak of so I never really dried out I was always constantly wet that uh course in cabinet making um was instrumental in making me Weare of tactile Sur Services you know um instead
Of paper I was dealing with wood but still uh I became aware of of U of material unfortunately the thing came to an end when summer came or spring and the the barracks had to be available for the people that were coming there for summer
Vacation so they U asked us if we could find other waters and the uh organization uh that assisted us always was the refugee organization called highers and we were all taken to first little town or sort of a suburb of the ha rice where I don’t know why we
Couldn’t stay but I think we were no more than two or 3 weeks from there we went to a very luxurious Villa in sing I have found this Castle marvelous very very luxurious place with two large buildings uh the big lake uh several sports facilities like for hockey playing for soccer playing
For baseball and we had the teachers coming in train Us in English and then we also had a teach us Spanish that came once a week and uh we also studied uh everything about the English uh currency because many people was thinking of going possibly later to England This Charming Life didn’t last
Very long um as of May 10 1940 Germany invaded Holland those days the first days we slept in a Cellar afraid of being bombed rdam was badly bombed so badly that we could could hear uh the the bombs going off we were there five days under those conditions um and the
Germans insisted that all Jews must live um at least 30 kilm from the sea when they came uh they informed the the directors that uh that they were interested in using this uh excellent site for their Naval High command and because it was on on a hill
And it had all the facilities that they were looking for for their high ranking offices that they had to somehow move the people out so immediately they went to work they called the highest organization in the Dutch community and they found families for some of the people uh that
Were going to different cities in Holland and we unfortunately did not uh have a good luck to be sent to a family which we would have preferred and they said uh you you and you but 30 of us go to the Dutch Jewish orage in Amsterdam so we were moved to Amsterdam
And uh that was a completely different uh environment very very severe discipline very strict the woman director was a very very uh strict and and difficult with us because she didn’t really like the fact that we German you know Jewish people were invading their the orphanage Alex stayed on in that
Orphanage um but I and a friend of mine a vienes boy were taken to a farm in h this was a farm that was run by a Jewish organization Preparing People to go to Israel it wasn’t really much of a farm it was primarily just tomato hot houses
My job was to repair the glass pains which were constantly breaking in those hot houses and making things worse we wore these wooden shoes and as I was climbing up on those glass houses to repair glass while I was repairing a glass I was breaking glass with my shoes
So was an unending a job that I had I stayed there much of the summer and was taking taken then to einthoven to be put up with the Jewish family again while in einthoven I enrolled in in the Amat School professional The Vocational School System Meanwhile my parents who had
Stayed behind in Berlin had the intention of if we could get uh visa to go to America they would go via Holland and pick us up that of course was no longer possible an interesting and unbelievable circumstance I found only later my parents in December 38 received a deportation order to leave
Germany sounds terrible but of course that’s what I wanted to do to leave Germany that deportation order I can’t imagine it must have been in the mail the DAT that I left because it’s dated December something thing and I left December at any rate much as they wanted
To leave they weren’t able to leave because the papers for the US were not ready and surprisingly surprisingly my father got one extension after another the deportation order said you must leave Germany within two weeks or 3 weeks uh December 14 1939 finally my parents boarded a boat
In Norway for the US where they were greeted by my father’s brother it sha who had provided the affidavit that name was slightly different than ours a different spelling cha which in russan means black my parents W up in New York New Jersey meanwhile Alex and I were in Holland
Alex still at the Jewish orphanage I in the meantime at this Jewish family and Ein our parents uh tried very hard to uh bring us over to the United States to become again a part of the entire family uh as we were separated for several years so they sent us an
Affidavit and with that affidavit we were allowed to go to the American Embassy in rdam Port City uh where we received uh a visa to enter the United States the problem of course was to how to leave Europe and I received a message that I should come to Amsterdam where a small group
Of German Jewish children that were the same boat as I was that um had papers to go to America there was one one problem in order to go to uh Portugal Lisbon to take a boat you had to go through France Spain and into Portugal going through
France was no problem because it was occupied by the German but going through Spain you needed a transit Visa a cash 22 situation arose in that Spain wouldn’t give us Transit visas unless Portugal provided an entrance Visa because they were afraid we would be
Stuck and it went on and on and on and fortunate thing is that by this time most of the consulates in Europe were located in Berlin Germany had occupied you know the better part of e Western Europe and so you had to go back to Berlin because that’s where the consulate
Were in February 41 Alex and I along with a group of a dozen other children went back to Berlin to secure Transit visas to go through Spain and entrance visa to get into Portugal I have to say from the outset that that period probably was the
Scariest period in my life we were taken to an old age home um I remember walking into that place thinking I wouldn’t be able to stand here two weeks the stent of that place was impossible um and it was a gathering place where people some people that had
Come back from a concentration camp and people that were in the same situation we were in were put up in that place Berlin was closing in on us in 1941 um we didn’t have to weigh at a Jewish star but you could only buy food between 3:00 and 4: in the afternoon
Which of course meant that the stores were already empty existence was really really quite horrible not knowing whether you will be able to get out was scary and uh I didn’t realize how scary it was because um shortly after we did manage to get out that Jewish old age
Home that we were staying at was turned into what is called zaga in late 41 which is where all the German Jews from Berlin were gathered to go aitz and uh teresian sh in various concentration camps within a day or two I received a postcard asking me to appear in front of
The gapo and the prince albera that was a very scary situation I went to the Jewish congregation I I said I got this card um what do I do he says I’ll go with you when I arrived I remember going up into a small office this man started screaming at
Us where do you get the nerve coming back to Berlin you’ve been deported well I was totally unaware that the dep deportation order that had been given to my parents um had applied to me and they had never met mentioned it it said again you have to leave Berlin within 2 weeks
Well of course we we have hadn’t gotten our transit Visa through Spain and my entrance Visa into Portugal and as I said it went back and forth and this went on for two months meanwhile we had we were getting extensions I don’t know how we managed to The Story Goes
That there used to be a Jewish police chief uh in Berlin I think his name was vice and somebody thought that he still had connections but I don’t I did some research on it later and found that Vice was no longer in berin that point so how to
Explain uh that we were able to get extensions I don’t know after 77 years and recent in-depth research there is finally a definitive answer to the question of who rescued George and Alexander Cherney and the refugee compatriots in May of 1941 my name is Jazelle Hyman retain second cousin of George and Alexander
Cherney working with Elena Cherney Alexander ‘s wife a research librarian I and my team have uncovered the details of the boy survival Gertrude Fontaine emerges as a key figure who unlocked every possible door to release the Jewish children of Europe from the fate of persecution and extermination gertude was a trained
Social worker an early Zionist a zealous bureaucrat an administrator and a tireless worker as well as an altruistic woman she was based in Amsterdam and working for the Jewish Refugee committee it was to this committee that George referred when he was asked for his destination by authorities as he at 14
And Alex at 12 crossed the border into Holland by the outbreak of World War II it was Gertrude who was responsible for setting up the training program in Holland that received George and Alex the vision of gertrud’s program was to provide skills and trades that could enable these orphan children to
Immigrate Gertrude was also one of the architects of the Kinder transport to England and to Holland Gertrude and the Jewish Refugee committee were under constant political as well as Financial pressures coordinating with the American joint distribution committee hias hiem and other Jewish relief sources by the time George and Alex’s
Parents were settled enough in the United States to provide affidavits and passage for their sons at the end of 1940 there was no issuing consulate for visas out of Holland to Lisbon left in Amsterdam so George and Alex had to take the incredible risk of going going back
To Nazi Berlin to where the embassies were in order to get their visas in February of 1941 George specifically describes the circumstances in a document which he wrote to Miz kissing a Dutch journalist in 2011 who was researching what happened to the foreign children who were in orphanages in
Holland George writes that February we returned to Berlin part of a group of 12 all seeking the necessary papers to travel to Lisbon Portugal in Berlin they were stranded for months with a cohort of other children known as the 12 Berlin group waiting for the Portuguese government to
Allow them entrance to Portugal so they could reach their ship in Lisbon in late April early May of 1941 Gertrude bravely made the trip from Amsterdam to Lisbon trying to ease the bottleneck of immigration out of the last open port in Europe fortunately for our story her next stop was Berlin where
She was to meet with the agency that oversaw the case of George and Alex and the Berlin group 12 what we have found is that in her letter of the 14 of May 1941 to MC troper of the American joint distribution committee a leader himself she makes the specific request that he
Add the 12 Berlin group to his list of passengers with the best likelihood of Transit visas to pass from Germany to Lisbon and now I read from the letter this is from The Wire Fontaine informs after thorough discussion whole situation cannot book more than 26 names already reserved plus 12 children Berlin
Group even after her own son was safe in Palestine and her daughter had sailed for the United States Gertrude could have saved herself but no she continued with her mission to save as many children as she could when we finally got on a train to go to lisan
Portugal um I was thinking that you know I could have been getting on his train instead of going west going East Luckily we managed to get out in beginning of June the end of May we were on a sealed train we laughed about that because you know we thought are they are they afraid they we going to get off the train I mean in retrospect I realized this train
Was sealed because they weren’t afraid we would get off they were afraid that people would get on uh anyway the train stopped in Paris at the railroad station we could we didn’t get off we were met by some people again some Jewish committee um that handed us a baguette and a
Salami and so we had something to eat on the on the train and continued on and the first time we got of the train was in San Sebastian in Spain now Spain had just barely recovered from Spanish Civil War and I remember being put up in this very elegant superb Hotel in San
Sebastian but when it came to eating we were given a plate with one little sine on it or something like that but at any rate we were free and that was really the main thing thing we continued on to Lisbon Fugal I wrote a postcard and I also have a copy
Of the postcard that I wrote to my parents when we arrived in Holland these two postcards you must see side by side because they’re like two book ends to a story the postcard that I sent when we arrived in Holland was still written in German script Cene
Shrift and the postcard that I wrote from Lisbon was in regular Arab script and it tells a story you know that U this transition from One Life to another arriving in Lisbon and walking the streets was really like uh going from night to day I mean Europe
You know was still under War conditions um all windows were sealed black so they wouldn’t have lights um on the streets uh in Portugal the streets were lit you know like Time Squares now um there was food in the stores um so it was really quite
A shock um we stayed there uh about 10 days uh one sort of amusing story is that while we had eaten the baguette that gave us were given to us in Paris we had about 3/4 of the salami still one of the things that we were always aware
Of you know um is not to get noticed and here we were with this Salam me smelling um and um we had a little suitcase which we didn’t need anymore because we didn’t have anything else in it I took the salami in a little suitcase we went down a street so there
Was sort of a triangular house I left the suitcase on a sidewalk and quickly walked around the triang LA house and uh uh for all I know that salami is still there we were read a book on a ship called muino for June 10 1941 and the only thing really still
Worrisome at that point was that German UB boots were sinking ships left and right so that was a concern in the back of our mind whether we were going to get to New York the strangest thing about it is that my memory is only
I spent the 10 days that it took to get to New York 11 days on Deck never below deck and it was the middle of summer when I arrived in New York supposedly there were hundreds of other children on that ship I never saw any there may have been
Several levels on that boat I don’t know but we still have a list of people that r that ship and they were listed June 21 there newspaper announcement that the ship is arriving in of all places Staten Island we arrived the night of June 20
To 21 1941 and the boat was sitting in a harbor apparently it couldn’t land until the morning I guess in the morning we went downstairs and there was were my parents my cousins um moris Chana and P who met us was taken back to Newark to my
Parents who had an apartment on Clinton Avenue in Newark New Jersey America was not yet in the war but the war effort to supply England with weapons and Machinery was really taking hold in the US and um there was a program that uh I think the National Youth Administration offered they would
Make you a machine operator in 6 weeks and I signed up for that and 6 weeks later I was a machine operator making 70 cents an hour I was going to berer evening High School from about let’s say 7 to 11: in the evening and uh after my high school went to uh
My job at the new F Factory job operating Char La meanwhile America entered the war in 1943 I went into the army I was shipped off to Rockford Illinois to take my basic training when I finished basic training came back to a camp in Pennsylvania which was sort of a um
Transition camp where people were being selected to go to the Pacific to go to Europe since they knew my German background they obviously the sensible thing was for me to go to Europe and not the Pacific in May 43 I found myself on a liberty ship really the smallest
Oceangoing vessel that the Army had going to England we arrived uh in I think Cardiff England and were shipped to a holding place in Winchester at that point us had entered war and we were just really waiting for the Normandy invasion we kept moving closer and closer to the southern part of
England near southam so that where the ships were leaving July 24 I landed on Utah Beach there was still no Port we had to climb down the ship and go get into landing craft and I was attached to a small prison of War starcade As an interpreter
That starcade was put up to help to establish the first medical facility the us had in France these were tents where they were able to do surgery and what have you what the German prisoners did to some degree is poor cement floors so that the medical equipment could rest on
That you know thex machines and whatever have you the prisoners had it very good theyve you know they had the same food that we did the spring of 45 I uh joined military government first in car um and then in Manheim and I functioned As an interpreter and I
Stayed there till um January 46 when I was discharged from the Army and in Manheim I managed remnants of a small Jewish Community I um remember heading for our office there and a young man was coming at me in a dark blue suit and I noticed he had a m doit and his
S I asked him about that and yes his name was an Michelle he had survived aitz and the interesting thing about this also is that he came eventually to the US and became the head of the ug in the US I was discharged from the Army the
Big question is now what I knew I wasn’t going to go back to the factory job in New York New Jersey I had the GI bill which gave me some time to think about things what I want to do and how to proceed it was sort of a period of
Finding yourself I did know that I was interested in art and I thought for the first time in my life I can afford to go to out School in nework there was a school called School of Fine industrial Arts uh as I found out it wasn’t particularly um distinguished but it was
A start and it was a start and then it I got my feet wet um in the art meanwhile um had been pointed out to me that I must really go to a better school um and I should go to Pratt Institute I became more sophisticated about the the Arts in
General on April 27 in 1947 there was a performance and for dollar2 in the back row of zigfield theater you could really see wonderful dance Alex came with me actually and next to me was a vious young girl at the end of performance we walked out I saw Sonia coming down the stairs
And our our eyes sort of uh connected and I after for dat we are here 70 years Later a word about Sonia’s family and Sonia Sonia was born February 4th 1930 in Prague her father Francis Cutz was a lawyer for a large corporation in Prague and was married to EA yunman cats Sonia had a little brother 6 years younger they both lived very comfortably in
Prague until things began heating up because of possible German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March of 1939 when just about the Germans were um marching into Czechoslovakia her father decided to pack up things and immigrate they took a train to Holland where they took a boat to London and and then moved on to
Canada where the family lived for several years in 19 40 they managed to get their papers in order to come to the US and they settled in Forest Hills Queens where Sonia grew up had her schooling through high school and then on to Queen’s College we had our first child nja in
1953 which was shortly followed two years later by Carlo we were very very happy family in Forest Hills I meanwhile had started my first job in 1950 with Donald deski and Associates who was a well-known industrial designer best known for his interior design of R in Music Hall I then in
1953 moved on to the office of George Nelson and Company the Nelson office was really the focal point of design in New York in those years in 1955 I I left Nelson and opened an independent Design Studio on East 46 Street and as I became better known as a
Designer uh moved to a larger office uh on 57th Street and then to an even larger office on 53rd Street until we wound up in our house on 72nd Street in 1955 when I had opened my independent Design Studio I also began teaching at the School of
Visual Arts and that has been a relationship to this very day my work became more and more important it was recognized which was gratifying appeared in journals in collections of museums without singing out any particular projects that I had been involved in I thought it might be best
To show projects that involved my family which was used very frequently as models Sonia more often than anybody but daughter Naja Carla even my grandson Max found their way in certain projects that we produced my parents who lived in New York New Jersey when they first came to
The states finally were able to live a fairly comfortable life in their own little house in nework until we really wanted them to be closer and they came and lifted on the partner for HS and enjoyed our little children my brother married Elena and camea to live in
Washington I’ve had a very happy life a long life the family life has been wonderful I’ve been successful in my profession I really couldn’t have asked for anything More E La [Applause] la E [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] A Student tells of Berlin by Alexander churny published in the Mexico City Collegian newspaper on August 6th 1953 the current headlines of horror and Terror and Berlin Germany certainly are reminiscent of the same sort of situation 15 years ago it was 1938 in my birthplace Berlin when Terror and
Bloodshed forced my brother and I to flee to Holland for shelter we crossed the border illegally but were allowed to stay in that hospitable country moving from refugee camp to refugee camp we finally moved into an abandoned castle that had belonged to an Austrian Baron who had moved to Argentina
There we had all the freedom possible and were also able to go to school but this situation just could not last suddenly the Drone of plains covering the blue skies on that memorable day of May 10th 1940 shattered our dream world into pieces a platoon of Dutch soldiers
Occupied our estate and took us into protective custody being located in the woods of the famous Resort scavening located on the North Sea we were somewhat more sheltered than living in the nearby capital of the haue during that first week of fighting a family of Austrian refugees took shelter in our large house
As theirs had been bombed on the 10th day of fighting when the Dutch surrendered we found husband and wife had committed suicide they were political Exiles and did not want to live under the Germans again after the surrender the German Navy High command forced us to leave the
Castle within 48 Hours as it was needed for their headquarters thus all of the 170 children who had lived there were scattered all over the country I went to an orphanage in Amsterdam somewhat similar to the one in the tales of Charles Dickens the boys had shaved heads wore uniforms and the disciplining
Was very rigid I was not used to such treatment but had to grin and bar it the first year under German occupation was not easy but everybody seemed to take it in his stride every night the British bombers bombed the city and in the morning one would see the damages Left Behind inaccurate
Bombing certainly left a tremendous toll on civilians my parents in the meantime having arrived in the US in 1939 were finally able to send us the affidavits necessary and we proceeded to go back to Berlin on February 1st 1941 in order to receive our Spanish Transit visas and to
Go from there to Lisbon Portugal the only remaining open port in Europe at that time time again Misfortune seemed to be with us the Spanish Consul in Berlin refused to give us the Visa and while waiting to get it from the Spanish Consul in Amsterdam our American visas and passports were
Cancelled at that moment we were in danger of ending up in a concentration camp as we had been forced out of Germany previously and were not to return ever again through connections of the former Chief of Police in Berlin we were granted another two month day in order
To get our difficulties straightened out through a great amount of effort by the refugee organizations we were able to get everything in order and proceeded to Lisbon by way of France and Spain we waited in Lisbon 10 days to get on a converted banana freighter that carried an overload of 400
Persons we gave our cabins to some older people who were sleeping in the baggage room and we slept all the way on the top deck dodging minefields for 10 days in the Atlantic Ocean we finally saw the Statue of Liberty in the harbor of New York on June 21st
1941 the day the Germans invaded Russia we will like to thank and acknowledge Bernard waserstein the Harriet and R my professor ameritus of modern European Jewish history at the University of Chicago for his meticulous research and his careful archives on this subject the publication of his important book The
Ambiguity of virtue Gertrude Fontaine and the fate of the Dutch Jews published in 2014 by Harvard University press as well as a supporting documents for the book found at the University of Chicago’s reagen Stein Library special collections Research Center provide confirmation that George and Alex Cherney and the 12
Berlin group were indeed rescued from Annihilation by gertrud Fontaine we are very grateful to the archists at the University of Chicago’s reagen Stein Library special collections who retrieved and organized the important boxes of research into original papers and correspondence we would also like to thank and acknowledge Kurt roberg one of
The 12 Berlin group who has provided a wealth of knowledge on the improbable escape from Nazi Germany based on his captivating Memoir a Visa for your life Kurt has donated his extensive collection a family Holocaust documents and memorabilia to the Jewish Museum Berlin where they were a substantial
Part of the Museum’s largest temporary exhibit haat on exil home in Exile 2006 through 2008 for the past 15 years he has also been an annual participant in the Museum’s Renown h host eyewitness Workshop program working with German high school students and student teachers adding to their history knowledge with his personal Holocaust Experiences For