Pollatz Manfred & Lili (Engelsmann)

Pollatz, Manfred and Lili Manfred and Lili Pollatz were German teachers who were Quakers. When the Nazis came to power and the Nazi salute “Heil Hitler” was introduced in school, the Pollatzes resigned, sold their home, and moved to the Netherlands with their four children. They bought a big house in Haarlem and opened a school for refugee children—many of whom were of German Jewish origin—and took Jewish children who had arrived in the Netherlands without their parents into their home. Classes in the school that opened in 1934 were taught in German. Germany occupied the Netherlands in 1940 and soon introduced anti-Jewish restrictions. In September 1941 Jewish children could no longer go to school with non-Jewish students, and the Pollatzes’ school had to close down. The Pollatzes, however, remained committed to their Jewish wards, and their home continued to offer shelter to needy refugees. Two of their former students stayed on, and the couple took in a number of children and babies who were referred to them by the Haarlem welfare department, as well as Jewish children who were brought in by the Dutch underground networks. The German authorities suspected that the Pollatzes were hiding Jews, and at least seven searches were conducted in their home. In two of these cases, Jewish children were indeed found—first a girl, who was sent to the east and murdered, and in the second incident, two Jewish children, Robbi Presser and Leah Barzilay, were taken. The two had been brought to the Pollatzes by a resistance courier, J. H. Peereboom (who was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1994), who reported after the war that the underground was able to snatch them away and hide them again. In the course of this second search, Manfred Pollatz too was arrested and sent to Vuight and from there to the Dachau concentration camp. The Security Service report of his arrest states that he was arrested on May 14, 1943, on the charge of Judenbegünstigung (favoring Jews). Following his father’s arrest, Karl-Heinz (Pollatz’s son), a medical student who had been arrested in 1942 owing to his refusal to enlist in the army because of his Quaker beliefs, volunteered for military service in return for the release of his father. Manfred Pollatz was released, and his son went to serve as a medic in the eastern front, where he fell in combat. Lili Pollatz continued to hide half-Jews despite her husband’s arrest, despite the enormous danger and the fact that she was critically ill with cancer. It was Christoph Andreas Hollaender who first turned to Yad Vashem to have his rescuers recognized as Righteous among the Nations. Hollaender, the son of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, had been sent to the Netherlands from Germany. Since he had nowhere to go after the Pollatzes’ school was closed, the couple kept him in their home. Hollaender did not talk much about his wartime experiences, but his daughter, Anja, told Yad Vashem that her father was deeply marked by the events—especially by the arrest in May 1943 of the two children and Manfred Pollatz. Anja Hollaender decided to research her father’s story and to affix a plaque on what used to be the Pollatzes’ home in Haarlem, commemorating their noble and generous activities. To this end she put an announcement in a local paper, asking for donations. She was surprised to receive a significant sum of money from Israel, and when she enquired, she found out that it had been donated by Leah Barzilay (later Behard). On May 20, 1945 Lilli Pollatz, severely ill, wrote a letter to her American friend, Louise Jacob. “A nightmare lies behind us, perhaps even now not yet quite got over: one does not get so easily and quickly used to sunshine after a long time of darkness…. “ She wrote that they had hidden ten Jewish children between the ages of two months and three years, described the raid early one morning, when two children and her husband were arrested, and her son’s decision to enlist, despite his religious objection to military service, in order to save his father and family. Lili Pollatz died a year later on March 1, 1946. Peter Burns, a non-Jewish refugee from Vienna who stayed in the Pollatz home, was witness to the Pollatz’s courageous rescue activity. “In the face of death and adversity, both parents had an unfailing bel9ief and a tremendous personal courage much akin to that of the early Quakeers. They were talented writers and teachers, and exerted a great influence over the young people of whom I had the privilege to be one….” he said at the funeral of the Pollatz’ daughter Inge. “With the death of Inge, the Pollatz family has passed away physically. But their witness and the sacrifices they made live on in the memories and influence those they knew – especially those of us whose lives they saved.” On December 3, 2013, Yad Vashem recognized Manfred and Lili Pollatz as Righteous Among the Nations.