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Friday July 19, 2002

Piedmont man meets fellow WWII evacuated kids

ALEXANDRA J. WALL
Bulletin Staff

On July 14, 1938, they were two of 15 children who were sent without their parents on a ship from Hamburg, Germany to the United States. Weil was 12 years old at the time.

"I went up to her after she spoke, because she named the ship she was on, and said 'do you recognize me?'" said the Piedmont resident.

She didn't. "Of course she didn't know me," he said. "She hadn't seen me for 64 years."

The Chicago conference brought Weil, now 76, together with some 150 others who had escaped Europe as children, in the nick of time.

Much is now known about the Kindertransport, in which some 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Germany and Austria were sent to families in Great Britain who offered them shelter during World War II. But not much is known about the 1,200 or so children who were rescued in the same way, but were sent to the United States.

Weil is one those 1,200, and he decided to take part in "Living the Legacy, a Gathering of Descendants of Survivors of the Shoah," which offered sessions organized especially for people like him.

The Chicago gathering took place because of the efforts of two Maryland-based women. One of them, Iris Posner, knew about the Kindertransport organization, and wanted to find others like her who came to the United States. With the help of some Jewish organizations, she learned there were approximately 1,200 such children. She managed to locate about 400 of them.

For Weil, it was not only an opportunity to meet his contemporaries, but a chance to share the poems he's written, some of which have to do with his background.

Though Weil became a public school teacher and still works in real estate, he also has written seven books of poetry. He often reads his work at Bay Area coffee shops.

At the conference, he took part in a session called "In Their Own Words," and read his poems about his childhood to about 90 others who had been through much of the same experiences.

"Here I concentrated on [my experience], so they could identify," he said. Afterwards, many of them approached him to share their stories.

Before attending the conference, Weil had met survivors of the Kindertransport, but never others like him who came to the United States.

So having that kind of interaction was a powerful encounter. "It reawakens a lot of the stuff in you," he said. "How you grew up, and that you left your mother and father on the other side of the world."

Weil said 80 percent of the children who came to the United States lost one or both of their parents. Weil was lucky in that he was reunited with both, but the rest of his family did not survive.

At the conference, Weil learned that this group of children who came without their parents had all become "amazing success stories." Listing some of their accomplishments, Weil remarked that one, though he did not attend, had even won the Nobel Prize.

Many men had served in the Army as well, he said.

Weil found that his story mirrored the stories of so many who were there.

"We all were from above-middle-class families," he said. And "because we had this strong family tradition, even though we were young, once that was established in our personality, no matter what happened, the whole ethics we got from our parents stayed with us. You could see it from their success, and the way they raised their children."

But not only were they overachievers. "We all raised our kids in that German sternness," he said. "You can't overcome that, you carry it with you the rest of your life."

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