When an Indian anonymous helped the Austrian Jews escape from the Nazis

“Let me tell you a secret. Nana (Grandpa) Help Jewish families escape from the Nazis. “

This is the only sentence of his mother put Vinay Gupta on a trip to the past of his grandfather. What he discovered was a story more than imagination: an unknown work from the championship by an Indian businessman who risks everything to save strangers in the darkest hour in Europe.

This was not just sympathy. It was logistical services, risks and design. Returning to India, Kundanel has created companies to employ Jews, and build homes to house them – only to see the British declaring them as “foreigners of the enemy” and their detainees as soon as the second war erupted.

Condanluel’s life is read like an epic: a poor boy from Ludiana, married at the age of thirteen, who sold everything from wood and salt to laboratory equipment and bull wheels. I also run a clothing company and a matches factory. His class was issued in Lahore – joined the colonial civil service in 22 years, only to resign from everything to participate in the freedom movement and the life of factory building.

The leader of Indian Independence shook hands and then Prime Minister Jawaher Nehru and across the paths with actress Davica Rani on a ship to Europe.

In a rescue operation in Vienna, family notes, Gupta reveals his unusual Indian grandfather’s rescue on foreign lands – was collected together through family messages, interviews of survivors and historical records.

In light of Hitler in 1938 of Austria, Condanlal, a machinery manufacturer from Lodiana, in the northern Punjab state, which offered to Jewish professionals quietly in India to obtain life saving visas. Work offer, presented his livelihood and building homes for those families in India.

Kondanel saved five families.

Fritz Weiss, a 30 -year -old Jewish lawyer, was hiding in the hospital, and he thought the disease. Kundanol was also in the same hospital for a disease treatment.

After the Nazis was forced to clean the streets outside his home, Kundanlal handed him a lifeline: a work show in the fake “Condish Agencies”. I got it a visa for India.

Alfred and Ashsler, a main wooden worker, met Condanel as he brought his pregnant wife to the tests. He promised a future in furniture and a sponsor of immigration, and his family became one of the Jewish families that reach India between January 1938 and February 1939.

Hans Lush, the textile technician, answered the Condanluel advertisement in an Austrian paper for skilled workers. Show an administrative role in the fictional “Condish fabric mills” in Lodiana – with housing, profit, and a safe passage – seize the opportunity to start again.

Alfred Schvranic, who was once the owner of the 50 -employed chips wood factory, photographed his skills to Kundanlal and offered him a role in building the latest unit of plywood in India. His entire family was rescued, including his mechanical brother, Siegfrid.

Siegmund Retter, a machine tool, was among the first Kundanlaal to approach him. With the collapse of his work under Nazi rule, Kondanel began arranging his move to India to start again.

Everything began with the hospital bed in Vienna.

Kondanel, who is struggling with diabetes and hemorrhoids, in 45 years, sought new treatments and a reading of a specialist in Vienna. In 1938, while recovering from surgery there, Lucy, Alfred and Ashsler met a young couple expecting their first child. Among them, he learned to increase anti -Semitic violence and destroy Jewish life.

During the next few months, he met other men. With the encouragement of this success, Condanlal has developed newspapers that seek to obtain skilled workers ready to move to India. Among the respondents were Wachler, Losch, Schafranek and Reteter. Kundanlal provided every function, financial guarantees, and support to secure Indian visas.

“The amazing side of all the detailed Condanuel charts on behalf of these families was the extent of its proximity to the mouth, while maintaining the appearance of technology transfer to India to the end,” Gupta wrote.

“His intention or plans did not participate with any Indian or British officials. His family learned only his plans when he returned home after months.”

In October 1938, Losch became the first constellation of Condanel to reach Lodiana.

He was welcomed at the home of Kondanluel – but he found little rest in the quiet city, as Gupta writes. With no Jewish community, there is no cultural life and a struggling fabric, Losch left within weeks to Bombay (now Mumbai), citing bad working conditions and a little profit opportunity. no longer.

Weiss lasted less – less than two months. The company that I created for him, Condish agencies, did not take off. He soon moved to Bombay, found work on floors, and by 1947 he moved to England.

Despite their departure, Condanel did not carry any discontent, Gobta writes.

“My aunt told me that on the contrary, Condanluel was embarrassed that he could not provide a more suitable lifestyle and social environment in Vienna, and he felt that if he had, the two men may have stayed in Ludiana.”

Not all stories ended in this way.

Alfred, Lucy and Ashler, with their infant son, arrived at the sea, railway and road – at the end on the train in Ludiana.

They moved to a wide house that was built for them next to another, ready for Schafraneks. Alfred soon created a workshop for furniture, using the Burmese jacket and local Sikh workers to formulate elegant food groups – one of which is still alive in the author’s family.

In March 1939, Alfred Schvranic, his brother Sigfred and their families arrived from Austria. They fired one of the plywood factories in India in a shed behind the houses.

Payed and motivated, Alfred pushed the non -trained workers, determined to build something. Gupta writes, the work was intense, the heat of the Punjab is unfamiliar, and the isolation is clear – especially for women, mostly confined to home life.

With the passage of the months in Ludiana, the primary relief gave the road to boredom.

Men have worked for long hours, while women, limited in language and isolation, kept the family protein.

In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. A few days later, Britain announced the war on Germany – the British Parliament withdrew India to the conflict. More than 2.5 million Indians will serve in the war, and no longer 87,000.

In Lodiana, the reality of the war quickly reached.

By 1940, new policies for all German citizens – Jews – ordered or not – in detention camps.

Wachler and Schafranek families have been transferred by force to Purandhar Interpinment, near PONA (now Pune), located in bare barracks with kerosene lights and minimal amenities. They did not commit any crime – just carrying the wrong passport.

In the end, the version is possible – if they can find a paid work.

Alfred and Segfred Shafranic secured the roles of new wooden business administration in Bangalore and moved there with their families, and start again. The Wasshler family left the camp in 1942 after Alfred found a job in Karachi. The two families did not meet again.

The Boranhdar camp was closed in 1946, almost a year after the war ended.

In 1948, Alfred and Ashler cousin sponsored refugee visas for the family. In October, they flew from Karachi, and they never returned to India. Schafraneks moved to Australia in 1947 after a success project of plywood in Bangalore.

While searching for the book, Gobta Alex and Ashler – whose father Alfred, built the Burmese Condanluel’s teak office, which was used in his 120 -foot small office. (Alfred died in 1973.)

“Despite living in the United States since the age of ten, and now in his eighties, Alex and Ashler is still a pine for his life in India, eating in Indian restaurants, and he is happy to meet the Indians and surprises them with his knowledge of Urdu,” he writes Gupta.

Returning to Ludiana, Kundanel opened a school for his daughters at home, and soon expanded it to one of the oldest Punjab schools – which is still working today with 900 students. His wife, Saraswati, has grown increasingly and depression disorder.

Kundanlal and Saraswati gave birth to five children, including four girls. In 1965, Sarsawi died after a tragic fall of their balcony. She spent her last years in silence, emotionally distant from the family. Kondanel died a year later, 73 years old, from a heart attack.

“The idea of” passive passers -by “was a curse of Kondanel. If he saw something, or someone, then he attended it, he attended it, he never frightened him of the inclusion of the problem,” he wrote Gupta.

A group suitable for a man whose legacy was not just a work, but a calm challenge, mercy, and condemnation.