Barazetti Bill

Barazetti, Bill In Prague, Czechoslovakia, Bill (Werner Feodor) Barazetti, born in Aarau, Switzerland, saved 669 Jewish children from the clutches of the Nazi oppressors by arranging three transports out of Czechoslovakia for them, mostly to Britain. He was the driving force in the Kindertransport operation, risking his life in this endeavor. While organizing the operation he lived under an alias, often staying with the families he was helping. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Barazetti was a philosophy student at Hamburg University, where he met and became friendly with Jews, witnessing the Nazi persecution as Jews were marched off the campus to be taken to concentration camps. In 1934, he decided to move to Czechoslovakia, where he was recruited by the Czech Secret Service to work as an intelligence officer. He returned to the Hamburg area as a spy and after a year, the Germans discovered his identity and the SS attempted to arrest him. Barazetti discovered this plan in time and managed to fake his death, escaping to Poland, where he changed his identity. Caught by the Gestapo, he was beaten almost to death, but on the German-Czech border he was found by Anna, a young Czech girl, who helped him recuperate. He married her and they moved to Switzerland where their son Nicholas was born in 1937. Barazetti was eager to fight the Nazis, so he decided to send Anna back to her village with Nicholas, while he traveled to Poland, obtained a forged passport and returned to Prague. There he got involved in Nicholas Winton’s rescue operation to evacuate the Jewish children from the city. Winton arranged documents, raised funds, and recruited British foster families for the children. Shortly before the Germans invaded Prague in March 1939, Winton left to England and Barazetti took over. Although a wanted man and working under an assumed name, he succeeded in persuading the German authorities in Prague to send three rail transports of children to Britain, which in thespring of 1939 was not yet at war. Between the Germans moving into Czechoslovakia in March and the start of war in September 1939 – Barazetti obtained visas for the children and organized the trains to get them out. One of the children rescued is Israeli former fighter pilot Hugo Marom (Meisl), who was just ten years old when he and his nine-year-old brother Rudolph were packed on to a train organized by Barazetti and dispatched to England a few days before war broke out. Barazetti spent the rest of his life in Britain. On October 27, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Bill Barazetti as Righteous Among the Nations.