Henriette (born 1934) and her brother Erich Derschowitz, three years older, spent the first years of their life with their mother Charlotte Derschowitz in the 18th district of Währing in Vienna. After the so-called Anschluss on 12 March 1938 and the associated antisemitic violence, Charlotte Derschowitz decided to have her children baptised. By converting them, she was hoping to improve their living conditions and their chances of fleeing abroad.
During this period Henriette was admitted to the Kinderübernahmestelle (Child Transfer Office, KÜSt), 50 Lustkandlgasse in Vienna. The KÜSt served as a central reception and distribution centre for children and young people who were being transferred to welfare institutions. When the National Socialists came to power, the KÜSt was involved in the selection and extermination programme against disabled children, those “who were hard to educate” and other “unwanted” children and young people. In February 1939, the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community of Vienna) succeeded in relocating Henriette to the Jewish Infants Home at 35 Untere Augartenstrasse. She was to remain there until her departure with a Kindertransport.
Thanks to the support of the International Centre of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Vienna and under the auspices of the Comité des Avocates de Belgique pour l´Aide aux Enfants réfugiés d´Allemagne (Belgian Committee of Lawyers for Aiding Refugee Children from Germany) in Brussels – both organisations supporting Christian “non-Aryan” children – Henriette and her brother Erich managed to leave for Belgium on 24 June 1939 together with 21 other children.
After the Anschluss and the hardships faced by Jewish families in Austria, a few Jewish girls and I were allowed to enter Belgium on 24 June 1939. I was five and a half years old, the second youngest in the group. I remember being taught rudimentary French phrases by the other girls on the train: ‘s'il vous plaît, merci, bonjour Monsieur, madame’.
At the station, we were greeted by Belgian helpers led by Mrs de Munter-Latinis, the organiser of the transport.
(© Henriette Derschowitz 2012)
Arthur and Irma Scauflaire welcomed Henriette in Brussels. They had previously applied to an advertisement in the newspaper The Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century) for taking in a Jewish child from the German Reich. After an extensive correspondence with Dr. Marguerite de Munter-Latinis, President of the Comité des Avocates (Belgian Committee of Lawyers), they received permission to take the child in.
Henriette Derschowitz remained as a foster daughter with the Scauflaires in Brugelette for 15 years – until her marriage in 1954. Even during the German occupation she was able to stay with them. With support from the mayor, who renewed her residence permit every year, as well as from other neighbours in the know, her identity was kept secret and she could be protected from arrest and deportation. In 2002, Yad Vashem honoured Arthur Scauflaire and Irma Scauflaire-Lemaire for this rescue as Righteous Among the Nations.
Erich Derschowitz was separated from his sister from the day of his arrival in Belgium. At Herbesthal station, nuns from the convent in Moresnet awaited him and four other young boys. In the Saint François children’s home in Baelen-sur-Vesdre, he was protected from National Socialist persecution for over five years under the care of the mother superior, Henriette Krafft (sister Leonarda). After the end of the war in 1945, the siblings were reunited. Erich was able to live with his sister Henriette at the Scauflaires’ home.
The siblings did not see their mother Charlotte Derschowitz again. It seems that she was able to get herself safely via Belgium to London from where one or two letters reached her children. However, when the war began in September 1939, her trail was lost. She was probably one of the victims of the German bombing of Great Britain. AS
Portrait of Henriette Derschowitz: © Henriette Derschowitz