Tag #157024 - Interview #79438 (Hillel Kempler)

My sister Fanny was 19 at the time. She and my mother went to the English consulate, since Palestine was an English protectorate then, and procured a tourist visa for my father, which he could use to flee to Palestine. A lot of women were standing in front of the consulate, very few men, and also people from the SA. At this time the SA still had some respect for women. They would insult the few men who were standing there, but never hit them. My mother had to pay a lot of money for the tourist visa at the English consulate. That was the deposit to get my father back to Berlin. Fanny and Gusti were politically educated through the Zionist youth organization Tchelet Lavan [Blue-White] and immediately understood that my father needed to leave Germany quickly, because the Nazis would never stop looking for him.

My father stayed with the farmer in the village until he could take the train through Switzerland to Italy, and then take a ship from Italy to Palestine without facing any trouble with his travel papers. That was still possible at this time. The Nazis didn’t have search lists for people like my father yet, that came later. Luckily, it was still crude.