Exceptional energy, skill and foresight characterised this extraordinary man, who is still virtually unknown in Germany today: Max Gottschalk. Without him it would probably not have been possible to have had as many Kindertransports to Belgium.
Max Gottschalk was born in 1889 in Liège, the son of the tanner Samson Gottschalk (1860-1946) and his wife Wilhelmine Gottschalk, née Moses (1852-1926). His parents were German-Jewish immigrants. His father came from Geilenkirchen and his mother was the daughter of the tanner Mose Moses from Dinslaken. After completing his law studies, Max Gottschalk worked as a lawyer in Brussels and Liège. From 1921, he was responsible for Belgium and Luxembourg at the International Labour Office, an institution of the League of Nations. From 1923, he was a researcher at the Institute for Sociology at the Free University of Brussels.
Max Gottschalk was a leading figure in numerous national and international Jewish organisations. In 1933, he became the vice-president of the Brussels Jewish Community and in this position, founded an aid committee for Jewish refugees in Germany, the Comité d’Aide et d’Assistance aux Victimes de l’Antisémitisme en Allemagne (Committee for Aid and Assistance for the Victims of Antisemitism in Germany, CAAVAA). In mid-1938, this organisation was renamed Comité d’Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Refugiés (Assistance Committee for Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR). In 1939 and 1940, Gottschalk was the president of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, HIAS, an international Jewish emigration aid organisation founded in 1927.
After the November pogroms in 1938, the CARJ founded its own Comité d’Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Réfugiés (Assistance Committee for Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR). This committee, together with the Antwerp Committee Voor Het Joodsche Kind van Duitschland (For the Jewish Child from Germany), enabled around 1,000 Jewish children from Germany and Austria to come to Belgium in 1938 and 1939.
After the German invasion of Belgium in 1940, Max Gottschalk escaped to the United States. In New York, he taught at the New School for Social Research. After the end of the Second World War, Max Gottschalk returned to Belgium. From 1956 to 1962, he was the chairman of the Jewish Community in Belgium. In 1959, he initiated the establishment of the Martin Buber Institute at the Free University of Brussels. He died in 1976 in Ohain, Walloon Brabant. AP