December 27, 1934 Mr. J.D. Oppenheimer made a motion that San Antonio accept through the National Coordinating Committee (NCC) one male German refugee. Motion seconded and carried.

March 26, 1935 Miss Hirschberg referred to a letter that has been received from the German Jewish Children’s Aid, Inc., asking for an appropriation of $150.00. The motion was made by Mr. Morris Stern to contribute $150.00. Motion seconded and carried.

October 5, 1937 Motion to hear Cecilia Razovsky, Co-director of German Jewish Children’s Aid on October 12th in San Antonio.

November 22, 1937 A motion was made by Mrs. J.M. Frost to consider taking one German- Jewish family. Motion seconded and carried.

April 7, 1938 A letter was read from the NCC requesting a donation. Mr. J.D. Oppenheimer moved we appropriate $500.00 from our Special Donation Fund, it being an emergency at this time. Motion seconded and carried.

July 6, 1939 The placement of refugees was discussed. Mr. J.D. Oppenheimer suggested a committee of ten be appointed to find employment for the 22 units which are to come. The president announced he would appoint a committee.

January 3, 1940 . . .letter from the German Children’s Aid in regard to the placement of children in San Antonio was read. This was referred to the Council of Jewish Women as it is their project.

June 5, 1940 A letter was read from the National Refugee Service asking the Federation to continue receiving two units monthly. A motion was made by J.D. Oppenheimer that we accept our two units a month from the National Refugee Service, if possible. Motion carried.

Because units referred to either families or individuals, there is no way to determine the exact number of refugees who were settled in San Antonio.

Rosa Ledermann

When Jacob and Golda Ledermann learned that it might be possible to send one of their children to safety in the United States, they quickly registered their older daughter, Rosa with an agency in Berlin. Their son Franz had already gone into hiding. His whereabouts were unknown. Although the Ledermanns were unable to pay for her passage, Rosa’s application was approved. She said good-bye to her parents and sister Margot in Hamburg and joined 12 other children and a GJCA chaperone on the U.S.S. Manhattan.

Rosa was 12 years old when she arrived in New York City on February 22, 1938. Only hours later, with an identifying tag on her clothes, she boarded a train to San Antonio to meet Meyer and Sylvia Kahn who had agreed to open their home to her. Rosa spoke no English.

From the beginning, the Kahns welcomed Rosa into their family circle and treated her as a daughter. She adapted to American life quickly, determined to learn to speak English well. She attended Paige Junior High School and graduated from Jefferson High School.

Several times, the family initiated efforts to bring Rosa’s younger sister Margot to the U.S., but they were unsuccessful. Rosa continued to write to her parents, believing the family would one day be reunited. It was not to be. Her father was arrested and sent to the Sachenshausen concentration camp where he died. Her mother, sister, and older brother Franz perished in Poland. The last letter Rosa wrote to them was returned unopened.

Although the Kahns never formally adopted Rosa, she assumed their surname. Her ties to the family were further strengthened when Rosa married Meyer’s nephew, Daniel David Horowitz, in 1946.

Two years later the young couple moved to Corpus Christi where they raised two sons, Jerome and Gary.

Alice Schoen Schwartz

“They saved our lives and I will be grateful for- ever.” - Alice Schoen

When Abe and Bella Rosenberg heard that homes were needed for Jewish children seeking refuge in the United States, they volunteered to accept Alice Schoen from Kassel, Germany into their family. Alice, age 14, said good-bye to her parents in Germany on May 2, 1938. Twenty-six days later, she arrived in San Antonio, Texas to meet the Rosenbergs.

“Having Alice changed my life. I might have grown up with materialistic ideas, but none of that matters if you can’t live in your home. I learned what is really important in life.” - Miriam Rosenberg Sobel, 2008

Although she understood little English, there was no mistaking the warmth of the Rosenbergs’ greeting. The whole family was there to meet her when she stepped off the train. They took her into their lives as if she were a long lost relative.

The Rosenberg children, Miriam and Stanley, and a host of aunts, uncles, and cousins who treated her with affection and kindness made her adjustment to a new life easier. Alice learned English quickly, was enrolled in Jefferson High School as a sophomore, and attended classes at Congregation Agudas Achim. Her life assumed the normalcy of an American teenager but she constantly worried about her family in Germany. She turned to the Rosenbergs for help. They applied for a visa for Alice’s father and signed affidavits pledging financial support for him. Six months later he arrived, settled in New York with a relative, and found work.

The Rosenbergs helped him apply for immigration papers for Alice’s mother and two brothers. They were able to board one of the last ships to depart Germany before World War II began.

Soon after graduating from high school, Alice moved to New York to help support her family. Her affection for Abe and Bella Rosenberg remained strong. She credits them for saving her and her entire family. Alice remained in New York City and married Albert Schwartz, a survivor. They have raised three daughters, twins Barbara and Frances, and Arlene.

Madeleine Liebmann Wolf

Madeleine Liebmann, one of the 1,000 children who found safe haven in the United States, left Berlin in 1940 at the age of 14 to live with distant relatives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Her parents and brother escaped to the Soviet Union, traveling across Siberia to Kobe, Japan. Eventually they found refuge in Ecuador. Madeleine met native Texan Raymond Wolf in Har- risburg while he was in the U.S. Military. They married in 1944 and lived in Harlingen and Brownsville for 40 years where they raised three children. They moved to San Antonio in 1983.

Renee May Pomper

Renee May was 12 years old when she arrived at Ellis Island with seven other children. Representatives of the National Council of Jewish Women met them.

Renee was sent to a foster home in Delaware. Unhappy with her relationship to her assigned family, Renee was moved to a more compatible home in New York City. She went to school and worked to save money to bring her family to the U.S. They arrived just before the Nazis halted all emigration. Renee’s parents settled in New York in time to attend her high school graduation. Sometime after college, Renee married Curt Pomper, also a German refugee. They had two children. After her husband died, Renee moved to San Antonio.

Max Stern

Sponsors: Milton and Sidney Kline

Max Stern was 32 years old when he left Germany to come to the United States in 1938. His cousins Milton and Sidney Kline, residents of San Antonio, had secured his visa with signed affidavits guaranteeing the immigration authori- ties that Stern would not become dependent on government aid. Stern worked for the Klines in their downtown department store until his retirement thirty-three years later. He was able to bring his 15-year-old cousin to this country. The Nazis killed his aunt and another cousin. Stern married Evelyn Passur and they had one son, Paul Stern of Houston.

Max and Hedy Weissman

Sponsor: Nat Goldsmith

Max and Hedy Weissman were refugees from Germany. Their sponsor, Nat Goldsmith, was active on the board of the Jewish Social Service Federation. The Weissmans established a resi- dence in San Antonio and remained here for the rest of their lives.

Erika and Bruno Rachmann

Sponsor: Julius and Louis Lauterstein

Erika Smoliansky left Germany with her family in 1939, a few months before World War II began. They booked passage on a boat to Shanghai where they were forced to live in an impoverished refugee district. It was there she met her future husband Bruno Rachmann, also a refugee from Germany. When the war was over, Erika contacted relatives in San Antonio, Julius and Louis Lauterstein. With their help, Erika and Bruno were able to immigrate to the United States in 1947.

The Scharlack Family Rescues Twenty

Meyer and Mary Scharlack and son Louis were instrumental in helping over twenty people immigrate to the United States during the 1930s and ‘40s. Among the rescued were Hugo and Blanka Scharlack and their children Ruth, Ellen, and Alex.

Others included Max and Recha Scharlack and four daughters, Joseph and Mata Zobel and two sons, Sophie and Frieda Zobel, Lena Hirsch, Louis Arbetter, Margaret Jacobson and three daughters and two Richmond brothers.

Max Reiter

First Symphony Director

“Until we hear a better symphony, we shall call San Antonio’s the finest developed in this part of the country.” - John Rosenfield, The Dallas Morning News

Max Reiter, a young symphony conductor from Italy, arrived in New York in 1938, to find the city already crowded with fine musicians who had fled Europe. Advised that no positions would be available to him there, Reiter traveled through the South, seeking a community that might want to establish a new symphony orchestra. He met with no success until he reached Waco, Texas, where he was given an opportunity to give a concert at Baylor University. The performance was a triumph. News of his musicianship soon reached San Antonio and a small group of local music lovers traveled to Waco to offer Reiter a position here.

Faced with the monumental challenge of creating the city’s first orchestra, Reiter threw himself into the assignment with vigor and determination. Within months, the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra gave its first performance at the Sunken Garden Theater with 2,500 people in attendance. In the years that followed, Reiter built one of the finest orchestras in the country. In 1945, Newsweek rated the San Antonio Sym- phony among the top 18 in the country.

Reiter took the orchestra on tour, staged an annual opera festival and created a “Music for Youth” program that brought students from first grade through college to monthly concerts de- signed to stimulate their interest and build future audiences.

The refugee who had not been welcomed in Nazi-dominated Europe brought music to unprecedented heights in San Antonio. During his 12th season with the orchestra, Max Reiter suffered a heart attack following a concert he had conducted in San Marcos. He died a week later at the age of 45.

A Texas Legend, Lyndon Baines Johnson

“I wouldn’t be here today, if it weren’t for your husband. He helped me get out.” - Spoken to Lady Bird Johnson at the dedication of Agudas Achim, Houston

Even before he was elected to Congress in 1937, Lyndon Johnson recognized the menace posed by the Nazi party and was concerned about the persecution of the Jews. His first opportunity to act came during his freshman year in the House of Representatives when he opposed legislation calling for the deportation of illegal aliens, among them many Jews. A year later, Johnson came to the aid of Erich Leinsdorf, a brilliant Jewish musician who was in the United States on a temporary visa. When Johnson learned that Leinsdorf would be forced to return to Nazi-occupied Austria, he arranged temporary refuge for him in Cuba and later secured papers that allowed Leinsdorf to enter the U.S.

In 1939, when Johnson’s friend Jim Novy, an Austin businessman, went to Poland to visit family, he carried with him blank visas provided by Johnson, who then prevailed upon American diplomats in Warsaw to approve the unofficial visas. As a result, 42 Jews reached the U.S. safely. With the State Department blocking Jewish immigration, Johnson allegedly found temporary haven for hundreds of European Jews in Cuba, Mexico, and South American countries while he obtained papers granting them entry through the Port of Galveston. The National Youth Administration, an organization set up during the Depression to provide assistance and training to young Americans, housed the refugees in Texas, according to unconfirmed reports. Funding for the secret operation was said to have come from contributions from Jim and Louis Novy and the Joint Distribution Committee.

One known incident illustrates Johnson’s ability to accomplish what others were not willing to consider. Johnson was running for Congress when Sam Toubin asked for help in getting his brother Milton into the United States. Milton, who had fled from Lithuania to Cuba, was stranded. None of his petitions to enter the country had been successful until LBJ became involved. Within a short period of time, the two brothers were reunited. Milton settled in El Campo, Texas.

Johnson’s aid to Jewish refugees was ac- knowledged for the first time in 1963 at the dedication of Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin, when Jim Novy spoke movingly about Johnson’s rescue efforts. Johnson did not deny the story. His wife Lady Bird, who was with him at the dedication, later said that person after person plucked at her sleeve that day to say that her husband had saved their lives.

Although some of his rescue efforts have not yet been officially substantiated, those that have been confirmed establish Lyndon Baines Johnson as a man of compassion and ingenuity. While other politicians carefully tailored their refugee policies to avoid conflict with prevailing anti-immigration sentiments in the country, LBJ acted unilaterally to keep the doors to freedom open.