Toronto Holocaust historian uncovers brilliant ploy that spared lives of Jews
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An Orthodox Jewish wife and her husband crafted a brilliant ploy to con Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler into ending the monstrous Final Solution program early, saving as many as 300,000 lives, Toronto-based Holocaust historian Max Wallace says in his new book.
Wallace, author of In the Name of Humanity — just released by Random House Canada — said that while working for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, he came across the remarkable story of Recha and Isaac Sternbuch.
The pair concocted an ingenious plan to convince Himmler that peace was possible with the Allies if he immediately halted the killings in concentration camps.
In an interview Tuesday, Wallace said that as a result Himmler issued a decree prohibiting “the further killing of Jews” six months before VE Day in May, 1945.
How did you uncover this amazing story?
“There’s actually a Toronto angle to the story. I was living in Montreal and interviewing Holocaust survivors for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation in the late ’90s, and I heard about a survivor living in Toronto with a very different story to tell. His name was Hermann Landau. He was basically the last living eyewitness to this incredible story. He was the secretary of a Swiss-based rescue organization during the war headed by an ultra-Orthodox woman, Recha Sternbuchand, and her husband, Isaac. That was more than 15 years ago. That set me off on this historical trail that culminated in these discoveries.”
How was this couple able to save so many lives?
The Sternbuchs, especially Recha, was quite a remarkable woman. She saved thousands of people before the war, thousands of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany before the war, and then hundreds more in the Warsaw Ghetto. But when they discovered the Final Solution in 1942, they threw themselves into rescue and determined that they had to do something. Their religion commanded it. Most of the establishment was relying on the Roosevelt administration who said the best way to end the Holocaust was to end the war as quickly as possible.”
What did they do?
“Near the end of the war, they enlisted the former president of Switzerland, Jean-Marie Musy, who was a fascist sympathizer ... He was a very devout Catholic. When he discovered the Holocaust, he was horrified and he agreed to act on behalf of this rescue committee. They sent him to Germany on several missions where he met with Himmler. The Nazis knew that they were losing the war ... (Himmler) was desperately seeking a separate peace with the western Allies so that they could together turn on Stalin and stamp out Bolshevism ... (Musy) convinced him that the only way that such an alliance could happen was if he ended the Final Solution — if he ended the extermination of the Jews in the concentration camps.”
Many historians say that Himmler was attempting to cover his tracks in advance of the Russians arriving. Why do you disagree with that version of events?
“We know that Himmler shortly after these negotiations began issued a decree prohibiting the further killing of the Jews and destroying the gas chambers and the crematoria at Auschwitz ... The Russians were actually two months away.”
Why haven’t the Sternbuchs been fully recognized before?
“The Sternbuchs never really talked about their work. That’s one of the reasons this is so little known. Recha Sternbuch to her dying day ... her response was always the same. ‘I didn’t do enough.’ She was wracked with guilt even though she may have saved as many as 300,000 Jews.”
