6

THE SPY WHO SAVED A GENERATION

From March 1938, Kendrick embarked on a humanitarian mission that was rooted in a sense of social justice. While he had no qualms about stealing secrets from the enemy and using surreptitious methods to gain them, the persecution of innocent people was different. It is now emerging that Kendrick and his staff saved a generation of Austrian Jews, with official records placing their rescue efforts at between 175 and 200 Jews a day.1 In a two-month period, this could have been as high as 10,000 saved. It included many of the Viennese intelligentsia: prominent doctors, surgeons, musicians, artists, psychoanalysts, architects and businessmen. Nor was he held back by his Roman Catholic background. This was a period when the Roman Catholic Church, and Christianity in general, was still entrenched in two thousand years of anti-Jewish teachings. He and his wife had many Jewish friends, and in fact his father-in-law was Jewish.

One Jewish doctor whom Kendrick helped was Erwin Pulay, an eminent skin allergy specialist and close friend of Sigmund Freud. Pulay was the grandfather of a well-known British actor, the late Roger Lloyd-Pack (famed for his part as Trigger in the TV comedy series Only Fools and Horses). As Lloyd-Pack recalled:

My grandfather’s name was on the Black Book – the list of prominent Jews to be rounded up by the Nazis – along with his friend Sigmund Freud. He had to get out of Austria, but that proved not so easy even for someone with a prominent medical position. He tried unsuccessfully to escape illicitly over the border into Switzerland, but eventually came out of Austria on a false passport. My grandfather was the first of the family to come out of Austria, leaving behind his wife and two children (my mother and uncle, George).2

Erwin Pulay was able to emigrate to Britain with help of the British liberal politician Lord Reading, himself a Jew. It was Kendrick who secured the necessary visa. In discussions with Lloyd-Pack, it became clear that the family always felt that Erwin had abandoned them, and they never really forgave him. They harboured a sense of betrayal, as he had left them to the horrors that were unfolding in Austria. Later, Lloyd-Pack came to realize just how difficult it was for Jews to emigrate. His grandfather was at immediate risk after the Anschluss and therefore his emigration was the most urgent. It took time to bring Lloyd-Pack’s grandmother Ida, mother Uli (Ulrike) and his uncle George out; but by 1939 they, too, had left Austria, aided by the British passport control office. Ironically, just a few years later, during the war, George Pulay was drafted into the Intelligence Corps and served as one of Kendrick’s secret listeners. Having escaped Austria, Erwin Pulay separated from Ida and continued as a specialist in his field, gaining respect for his work. The children were raised in England by Ida. Uli went on marry English-born actor Charles Lloyd-Pack.

Those who managed to flee with Kendrick’s help included his own physician, Dr Bauer. Bauer was later interned on the Isle of Man during the British invasion scare of 1940. Also Hans Schick, a Jewish lawyer, and his wife Mary; the famous pianist Peter Stadlen and his family; and Trude Holmes, who was born Gertrud Falk. It is believed that Kendrick knew Trude’s mother, Olga, who sang with the Vienna State Opera Chorus.³ Trude’s father, Berthold, was a familiar figure in Vienna, as he played chess at the Café Central, a place frequented by Freud and Trotsky. In 1935, Trude had completed a doctorate in psychology at the University of Vienna and studied under Professor Charlotte Bühler. Active in the socialist youth movement in the city, she was a close friend of Wolf Speiser, whose father Paul had been deputy mayor of Vienna. It was not until 1947 that Trude received confirmation that her parents had been deported to the Łódź Ghetto in October 1941 and had perished there in spring 1942.

Some of Europe’s finest musicians felt the full impact of the Nazi discrimination against Jews and ‘undesirable’ artists. Conductor Bruno Walter had already fled the Nazis once – in 1933, from Berlin to Vienna; and now he found himself in potential danger again. He was recording in Paris when news of the Anschluss came, and he took the decision not to return to Vienna. His daughter Lotte was arrested by the Gestapo in Vienna and held in custody until Walter used his influence to secure her release and get her out of the country. From the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, a number of Jewish musicians lost their jobs. They included first violinist Josef Geringer, second violinists Berthold Salander and Leopold Föderl, principal clarinettist Rudolf Jettel and oboist Armin Tyroler.

Another public figure who was helped to England by Kendrick was the distinguished Austrian musician, writer and conductor Erwin Stein, along with his wife Sophie and daughter Marion. Stein worked as an editor for the music publishers Boosey & Hawkes in London. Daughter Marion, a concert pianist, studied at the Royal College of Music in London, went on to marry the seventh earl of Harewood and became the countess of Harewood. The marriage eventually ended in divorce, after her husband’s extramarital affairs, and she married the Liberal politician and MP for North Devon, Jeremy Thorpe.

Leaving Austria was not easy, as Eric Sanders recalled:

I needed permission to leave Austria. For this I had to provide evidence that I was a Jew, that I was a legal resident in Vienna and had no criminal record. I had to obtain proof that I did not owe any taxes and was not liable for military service. For each of these documents I had to queue at least three times at the competent authority, first to obtain the application form, then to submit it duly filled in and finally collecting the approved document – if it was ready. At each office, I was one of hundreds standing for hours in kilometre-long queues.4

Kendrick soon found himself making discretionary decisions to save Jews when they did not meet emigration requirements. One of his future wartime interrogators, Derrick Simon, wrote in his unpublished memoirs that, during this period, Kendrick smuggled Jews and political opponents of the Nazi regime over the border by putting a sign in the back of the car ‘Corps Diplomatique’.5 This meant that the car had diplomatic protection and should not be searched at checkpoints or temporary roadblocks.

Bending the rules

The majority of the Jews whom Kendrick helped received their visas within the boundaries of British immigration laws; but he became increasingly frustrated by the number of Austrian Jews who could not be helped through legitimate means. There was a large number to whom it was proving hard to issue legitimate exit papers. With the pressure of émigrés queuing daily in the corridors outside his office, Kendrick faced a dilemma – how could he help them? Now he began to bend the rules and issue visas on the flimsiest of evidence, and for Jews who did not meet the criteria.

Although Hitler’s full-scale programme of annihilation of European Jewry – the Final Solution – was not formulated until 1942, even in 1938 it was clear to the SIS staff working across Europe that Jews and opponents of the Nazi regime were disappearing. There was knowledge, too, of the concentration camps. Pressure mounted on Kendrick to save more Austrian Jews and he faced difficult decisions. Within a fortnight of Hitler’s annexation, one of the first cases to pass across his desk was that of a seven-year-old Jewish boy. The Foreign Office had received a request that he be allowed to travel out of Austria on the passport of a British national, Mr Farquharson, of the Institute of Sociology. There was no question that the young boy would be returning to Austria after his ‘visit’ to England. The endeavour relied on the consent of his parents, the endorsement of Kendrick and someone to act as guarantor in the UK. Although the boy is not named in official documents, he came to Britain successfully, accompanied by Mr Farquharson. His was not an isolated case. A memo from Creswell at the Passport Control Department in London stated: ‘We have had several inquiries about the trick of adding the name of an Austrian child to a British passport.’6

When the noted Austrian black-and-white portrait photographer Lotte Meitner-Graf came into Holmes’ office, the latter exclaimed: ‘What are you doing here?’⁷

‘I’m Jewish,’ she replied. Meitner-Graf was a close friend, but Holmes had not realized that she was Jewish. Meitner-Graf and her husband, the scientist and chemist Walter Meitner, escaped Vienna in August 1938, certainly with the help of Kendrick and Holmes.⁸ Philip Franz Meitner recalled:

One night the British military attaché in Austria turned up at our house and informed my father that the British government wanted him to come to England. He was told a job awaited him. An RAF aircraft was waiting at the airport to transport him and my mother Lotte, and he had only two hours to get his stuff together.⁹

Walter Meitner was provided with a flat in south London and continued his studies at Manchester University, subsequently joining Imperial Chemical Industries. Lotte built up a successful career as a renowned photographer: 10 of her portrait photographs survive in the National Portrait Gallery, including famous figures such as Benjamin Britten, Yehudi Menuhin and Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor. Philip Meitner escaped from Vienna a few weeks before his parents. Aged just seven, he was escorted out by an unnamed Frenchwoman, who had already taken a number of children out of Vienna by adding them to her passport as her own.¹⁰ She was a friend of the Meitner-Graf family, visiting the house to teach French to Philip’s father. On 16 June 1938, Philip’s parents took him to Vienna railway station to meet her. He recalled that she was probably in her twenties, but he did not know whether or not she was married. She sat Philip on her knee during the journey – that much he remembers. They arrived at Calais the same day, disembarked from the train and took a boat to Dover, then a train to London. Philip was taken into the care of the Frankels, who were family friends. The unnamed Frenchwoman returned to Vienna and went on to save two more children in this way. She was later discovered and shot by the Germans.

There was concern, too, for Dr Paul Koretz, an Austrian Jewish lawyer working for the Hollywood film-makers Twentieth Century Fox. He was deemed to be at sufficient risk for the Foreign Office to send a telegram to the passport control office in Vienna. Twentieth Century Fox had made an appeal on behalf of Koretz, a leading employee in the firm’s European representation. It requested Koretz’s presence at an important consultation, adding that ‘he should now live outside [Vienna] and continue in their employ’.11 Kendrick was asked whether, in view of Koretz’s value ‘to British commercial interests, if you would do anything possible to facilitate his journey’. It was decided that the easiest way to bring him out of Vienna was to issue a temporary visa, despite the certain knowledge that Koretz would not return to Austria.

Another person who did not qualify for emigration was 19-year-old George Weidenfeld, later founder of the publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson. In 1938, he was studying law at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna.¹² His father was arrested by the Gestapo on 15 March and imprisoned for no other reason than that he was Jewish and his name was on a list of prominent Jews to be rounded up immediately. With emigration to Palestine or the United States impossible, Weidenfeld’s English teacher at the academy, Mr Parry-Jones, gave him a letter to take to Kendrick. Weidenfeld recalled the one and only meeting he had with Kendrick that saved his life. With a non-committal letter from a distant relative in England, Weidenfeld arrived at the British passport office with his mother.

‘It was doubtful that I had enough support in England to stay there,’ he recalled. ‘We were shown into Kendrick’s office. My mother pleaded with him for a visa.’

‘I’m terribly sorry – there’s nothing I can do,’ said Kendrick. ‘You don’t have the right papers. You need further support.’

Weidenfeld’s mother burst into tears. Kendrick swiftly grabbed Weidenfeld’s passport from his hand and stamped it. Kendrick could not grant a permanent visa for Weidenfeld to emigrate, because the fact that he did not have the right papers could easily have been detected. Instead, he issued a three-month temporary visa – something that by now the passport offices had been told not to do by the British government. It was enough to enable Weidenfeld to exit Austria and Kendrick knew that, once in Britain, it would be difficult to send him back. Weidenfeld entered England on 8 August 1938, via Switzerland, on a transmigration visa. Decades later, when speaking about it, Lord Weidenfeld was absolutely clear that, without Kendrick, he would have perished in the Holocaust. After coming to England, he took up a scholarship at King’s College London. Just over six months later, after the German occupation of Prague, he noticed that the BBC was advertising for foreign linguists. Being fluent in five languages, he was successful in joining the BBC Monitoring Service, eventually became a news commentator in 1942. He wrote a weekly column about foreign affairs in the News Chronicle and was introduced to some of the influential politicians and thinkers of the day. In post-war Britain, he established his own publishing house and became phenomenally successful.

Seventeen-year-old Eric Sanders (original name Ignaz Schwarz) had a similar experience. He presented himself at the British passport office, writing in his diary: ‘Fri 20 May. 10 a.m. British Consulate with my course enrolment. Huge queue as usual.’ After queuing for hours, he was told by Clara Holmes that he had insufficient papers to emigrate. He recalled:

She scanned the enrolment details and shook her head. ‘That’s not continuing your studies. This is just a short course.’ She looked at me and whatever she saw in my face was enough to influence her decision. She said, ‘Oh, never mind,’ and stamped Approved on the application form . . . Watching her sign her signature across the ‘Approved’ stamp, I had no reason to expect that our paths would ever cross again. But cross they did during the war and she would play an important part in my life.13

During the war, Sanders first enlisted in the Pioneer Corps, and then transferred to the Special Operations Executive, where he was trained to be dropped behind enemy lines into Austria. He arrived at an address in London to be kitted out for his mission. The lady who opened the door and who issued the kit was Clara Holmes, who was by then working for the Austrian section of SOE. Holmes is also known to have helped Freda Mary Rhein, a governess to English families in Vienna. Rhein was known to the legation because she attended many of Kendrick’s social occasions. As a Jew, she had to flee Vienna; and with the help of Kendrick’s staff, she emigrated to England and settled in Cambridge. Holmes’ daughter Prudence commented:

I remember one occasion when I was told not to go into the salon of our apartment. They didn’t want me to see that we were sheltering a Jewish friend of my mother’s and Miss Stamper. They smuggled her out of Austria. I am terribly proud of what my mother did to save Austria’s Jews.14

Another former refugee, Francis Steiner, vividly remembered the day in their family apartment when his mother pleaded on the telephone with Kendrick to get his brother Willi out of Vienna: ‘These are things you don’t forget.’¹⁵ Steiner’s brother had been accepted as a pupil barrister at Gray’s Inn in London, but did not have the correct paperwork:

I remember my mother’s impassioned pleading for my brother that the necessary documentation had been submitted and the visa should be granted. While the basic conditions were set by the Home Office, ultimately the power was left to the Passport Office to admit or refuse entry. The real discretion lay with him [Kendrick].¹⁶

Willi Steiner visited the legation and commented:

The consulate premises then were much too small. There were, of course, enormous numbers of people who applied for visas and went there. The result was that the queues sometimes extended into the street and there was a danger that people might be arrested arbitrarily out of the queues.¹⁷

That summer of 1938, Kendrick stamped a temporary visa for Steiner for three months – knowing it was against the rules to issue temporary visas, and in the certain knowledge that Willi Steiner would not be returning to Austria. His brother Francis also came out of Vienna.18

There is the unusual case of two brothers who fled Vienna – Georg Andreas Schwarz and Johann Hans Schwarz. They both changed their surname to Kendrick, in tribute to the man who had saved their lives. Georg Schwarz thus became George Kendrick, and when war broke out in September 1939 he was studying at Lille University in France. The French authorities offered him a choice between internment as an enemy alien and volunteering for the French Foreign Legion. He chose the latter and served with the legion at Oran in Algeria. His unit was then disbanded and he travelled to Portugal to spend some months there, while his mother, Hedwig, arranged for his entry into Britain. As George Kendrick, he enlisted in the British army’s Pioneer Corps.¹⁹ His brother, Johann, became John Kendrick and served in the Royal Armoured Corps, then as an interpreter at the interrogations in Munich of Nazi war criminals. Hedwig also changed her surname to Kendrick after her arrival in England.

Other Jews known to have been saved by Kendrick were his family’s friends, Ibby Koerner and Poldi Bloch Bauer. While nothing is known today about Ibby Koerner, Poldi Bauer was Kendrick’s golfing partner. Kendrick made it possible for Bauer to settle in Vancouver, where he started a timber business called Canadian Pacific Veneer and gained an international reputation. Some years later, Kendrick’s grandson Ken Walsh worked for the company for three years. The business was eventually handed over to Bauer’s sons and is now called Canfor. While in Canada, the family changed its surname from Bauer to Bentley. It remains extremely grateful to Kendrick.

Viennese-born Klara Modern – whose path had crossed with that of Soviet spy Edith Suschitzky in Vienna in the early 1930s – was working in England at the time of the Anschluss and did not return. Her family, however, was still living in Vienna and was at risk. It was thanks, in part, to the efforts of Kendrick and his staff that they were able to flee. Her brother, Ernst, obtained a visa signed by Betty Hodgson in May 1938. Their sister, Alice, had already left via Switzerland on 23 March 1938 with her husband Franz Alt, and they later went to New York via England.20 Kendrick was known to have contacts in Switzerland and he may well have been the one to help Klara Modern’s family out via Switzerland, through the British author Bryher, who was living there. Bryher, whose real name was Winifred Ellerman, was the daughter of wealthy shipping magnate Sir John Ellerman and was a long-time friend and companion of the American poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). Bryher travelled several times to Vienna and Prague to interview applicants for visas.

She later wrote about her rescue efforts, which saved 105 Jews and political refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia:

We were tough. We made loans for travel expenses and retraining on condition that as soon as the borrowers found work, they repaid us back even if it was a small sum each week. In this way our funds were continually employed and as the loans came back we could rescue another person from our long waiting list.²¹

Klara Modern, her sister Alice and brother-in-law Franz were active in 1938 and 1939 in getting other refugees out of Austria. In this, they were helped by Bryher, who sent them money from Switzerland for the purpose.²² Franz and Alice managed to rescue 30 individuals between 1938 and the outbreak of war the following year. It is not known how many were saved by Klara. In 1944, she went on to marry Charles Deveson, one of Kendrick’s intelligence officers.

There were some who did not manage to escape the Nazis. One such from Kendrick’s circle was Colonel Grossmann, an unmarried officer who had served in the Kaiser’s army in the First World War. He played the piano at several parties held by Kendrick or his secretaries. Prudence Hopkinson recalled:

After the Anschluss, Grossmann was urged by my mother and the staff to get out of Austria. They promised him: ‘We will get you to England.’ Unfortunately, Grossmann went to the equivalent of the British Legion in Vienna and was told that as a distinguished war veteran (even though a Jew) he would be safe.

He remained in Vienna, because he believed that his service to the Kaiser and his decoration for bravery would protect him. But the Nazis were indiscriminate in their targeting of Jews, including those who had fought for their country. The tragedy of his story is that he stayed in Vienna and perished in the Holocaust.

The count, the countess and the aristocratic art dealer

Kendrick had mixed in the highest social circles of Vienna for nearly a decade and a half. Now he drew on these contacts to help the city’s Jews.

Thus far, there has been little recognition of (or little information on) the part played in the rescue of Jews by Austrian aristocrats, who brought those Jews at immediate risk from the Nazis to Kendrick’s attention. One such person was Countess Cecilia Sternberg, who had been born Cecilia Reventlow Criminil into an aristocratic family in Schleswig-Holstein. At the age of 17, she had married a Bohemian nobleman, Count Leopold Sternberg, and found herself the mistress of two castles and a palace in Vienna. She moved in new circles and by chance met Count Kari Wilczek when they both attended a party at the house of Coco Chanel in Paris. Countess Sternberg found Wilczek quiet and reserved. He was an art connoisseur, described by her as ‘a confirmed bachelor and rather eccentric’. He agreed to show her Paris and impart his considerable knowledge of the city’s famous landmarks. It marked the beginning of a life-long friendship. Once back in Vienna, Wilczek introduced her to his friends, including the art dealer Count Antoine Seilern.

After the Anschluss, at great personal risk Wilczek sheltered Jews in Palais Wilczek. He had many friends either with Jewish wives or with part Jewish ancestry. Although Wilczek was not rich, his Jewish friends came to him for help in 1938. There is little surviving information about his bravery and personal sacrifice in helping Austrian Jews, except what Cecilia Sternberg wrote of him:

He protected their property and later their lives as best he could. His became a strange household. He had been forced to dismiss his valet because he believed him not entirely trustworthy. He had to go and forage for food himself, paying high prices for discretion. He had to carry heavy loads back to his flat to feed his hidden guests. There were always two or three, even more, who found at least temporary refuge there.23

Wilczek was questioned several times by the Gestapo and his home was searched. But no evidence was ever found against him, because, ahead of any raid, he was warned by a former female student whose boyfriend worked for the Gestapo. In the end, Wilczek was betrayed by a distant relation, in return for an exit visa from the Nazis to visit her lover in Spain. The Austrian aristocracy – including some of the pro-Nazi clique – came to Wilczek’s defence and he was released. Wilczek looked to Kendrick to help smuggle his Jewish friends out of Austria. This is known because

a note found by chance by a friend who has family links with that circle indicates that Count Wilczek knew Kendrick in the summer of 1938, and was referring people to him a couple of months before Kendrick was arrested. Wilczek forwarded to a friend the name and address of Captain Kendrick, for the sake of a Fräulein Steiner who needed to get out with a Kendrick-passport.²⁴ 

There is a postscript to the Kendrick–Wilczek–Sternberg story. Count and Countess Sternberg were able to return to their estate at Častolovice in Czechoslovakia and entertained in a style reminiscent of the pre-war period. Wilczek lived out the war in Austria in poor health; he had a frugal existence, as he had spent his money helping others. At the end of the war, with fears over the Russian treatment of Austrians, a young British officer stationed in Vienna was sent to ascertain that Wilczek and Sternberg were safe.25 The person who sent that young officer was Kendrick.

Closely connected to this aristocratic circle was the art historian and collector Count Antoine Seilern. He had been born in Farnham, in the English county of Surrey, the son of Count Carl von Seilern und Aspang and the American-born Antoinette Woerishoffer. His mother died five days after his birth and he was raised by his grandmother in Vienna. Between 1933 and 1939, he attended the University of Vienna to study art history. There, Seilern became close friends with the notable art collector Count Karl Lanckoronski. Seilern was known to Kendrick as he was part of the social scene in Vienna in the 1930s. Within a year of the annexation of Austria, Seilern had left Austria for Britain, taking with him his collection of art and drawings. Because he had British nationality, his exit posed no problem. In England, he continued to support his Jewish émigré art colleagues, one example being the financial help he gave the Austrian art historian Ludwig Münz. He also helped his friend Johannes Wilde, an expert on the drawings of Michelangelo, to bring his collection of books out of Austria. Wilde’s wife was Jewish and it was therefore essential to get both of them out of the country.

In 1939, Seilern purchased Hogg Lane Farm, near Chesham in Buckinghamshire, just a few miles from Latimer House, one of Kendrick’s top-secret wartime listening stations. Seilern enlisted in the Pioneer Corps, transferred to the Royal Artillery and, in November 1944, was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps on the recommendation of Kendrick, his old acquaintance from Vienna.²⁶ The nature of Seilern’s work in the unit is unknown, but is thought to have involved a mysterious secret mission abroad.

Bribes, accusations and favouritism

The tension and stress of passport work was intensified by accusations against Kendrick and his staff of bribery and favouritism towards those who received visas. Gainer told London:

The wildest accusations are made daily against Kendrick, myself and all of the staff. We are accused of favouritism and even of accepting bribes. It is admitted that some people have to be firmly dealt with because if discipline were relaxed, it would be quite impossible to handle the large crowd which flock to the offices.27

The allegation of bribes in exchange for visas was a serious one. Kendrick and Gainer undertook an exhaustive investigation and concluded that none of their staff was guilty of such activity either during or outside working hours. Even so, the accusations did not go away. Miss Felner of the German Jewish Aid Committee in London visited Vienna in early August and complained to the Home Office that she found conditions chaotic, with corruption rampant in official circles; there was, she reported, nothing that could not be bought – including forged passports.²⁸ Kendrick’s investigations were severely hampered by the fact that the Viennese police were implicated, so he could not ask for their help: it was reported that the police were taking buses full of Jews over the border at night into Czechoslovakia and Switzerland in order to rid Austria of some of its Jews.²⁹

There were other problems for Kendrick. Mary Ormerod, secretary of the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees from Austria, was offering proof that certain Jews had the financial means to support themselves, in the form of assets held outside Germany to aid their emigration from Austria. She argued to the Foreign Office that the refugee work of her committee was being seriously hampered by the lack of confidential communications with Vienna.³⁰ She suggested that details of these assets could be sent via the diplomatic bag, which would not be intercepted and its contents not disclosed to the Nazi regime. The details could then be given to Kendrick in person at his office.

Ormerod said she had definite proof that:

Letters and telegrams sent through the ordinary channels were sometimes never delivered and as a result, in several cases already, Captain Kendrick had refused visas to people some days after the Home Office had instructed him to grant them. In one such case, the person concerned had been rearrested before confirmation of an undelivered telegram came by bag.31

In May 1938, Ormerod lodged a formal complaint against Kendrick’s secretary Evelyn Stamper, accusing her of mistreating Jewish visa applicants. Apart from her secret SIS duties, Stamper’s job at the passport control office during 1938 was to categorize émigrés and assess whether they were genuine or persons who might become a drain on Britain’s resources. Ormerod complained that Stamper was asking emigrants whether they were Jewish, as a way of categorizing them; in her eyes, this amounted to anti-Semitism. The allegation was taken seriously, but it was not the only one. Stamper was accused of telling someone in an abrupt tone: ‘We cannot have any Jews in England.’ And ‘no visas for the United Kingdom will be given to people of Jewish origin’.³² Ormerod was quick to add that, during her visits to Vienna, she had always found Kendrick and his staff to be ‘helpful and sympathetic to the situation of Vienna’s Jews’.³³ Stamper defended herself by saying that she had done everything possible to help Jews and that many thousand could bear witness to that. Today there is insufficient evidence to assess whether the accusations against Stamper were true, but Kendrick investigated the allegations at the time. He and Consul-General Gainer took the view that asking whether someone was Jewish was not incivility on the part of Miss Stamper, and nor was it anti-Semitism.³⁴

The stress became too much for Stamper and she tendered her resignation, requesting a month’s sick leave, in lieu of working out her notice. It was granted. Kendrick continued to investigate and concluded that Ormerod’s complaints had been exaggerated. As Gainer wrote: ‘if certain instances appeared to be rudeness, it could be ascribed entirely to the overwork and nerve-strain resulting from the enormous pressure under which his staff were working’. Gainer went on: ‘No one who has not first hand knowledge of the conditions in Vienna can fully understand the strain which the Passport Control Officer and his staff are undergoing.’³⁵

The Passport Control Department in London received testimony from an official at the World Zionist Organization in London, which was headed by Dr Chaim Weizmann (later first president of the State of Israel). It endorsed Kendrick’s work and that of his staff, and expressed

the great gratitude of the Jews for the extreme courtesy and consideration with which applicants for permits and visas were treated by the Passport Control staff at Vienna . . . going to the British Consulate was for the Viennese Jews like passing from hell to heaven.36

Known for his fairness and objectivity, Kendrick defended his staff in difficult times, without denying the challenges they faced on a daily basis. At the end of a long day under extreme emotional strain, his staff were overtired, having had to deal with hundreds of hysterical Jews, some of whom had to be turned away. By August 1938, Maurice Jeffes, head of the Passport Control Department in London, estimated that there were still approximately half a million non-Aryans in Vienna and admitted that it was not possible to grant a visa to them all. According to another passport official in London, Kendrick’s staff faced ‘an unprecedented and almost intolerable situation’.³⁷

The accusation of favouritism was the hardest allegation to counter. Gainer was accused of favouring non-Jewish businessmen who sought to travel to Britain. He dismissed such allegations, saying ‘knowing how difficult it is to get through the crowds they apply to me or members of my staff by letter or in person and they are given a card which allows them to pass through the crowds’.³⁸ Members of the British diplomatic and consular services in other countries occasionally tried to get visas for their Viennese friends. Gainer admitted that he felt bound to honour the stream of personal letters which he received from them and recommended to Kendrick that he give them priority.

Jews and fake baptisms

With increasing pressure from London to limit immigration, Kendrick started to issue false passports to Jews. Revd Hugh Grimes, chaplain of Christ Church (the Anglican church in Vienna) and pastor to the British legation, was also working for Kendrick and SIS. Grimes has been described as ‘a shadowy figure, an intellectual priest, a former Cambridge scholar who taught at university before taking Holy Orders’.39 The triangle of Kendrick–Grimes–Richter (of the passport control office) was involved in a number of humanitarian efforts for Austria’s Jews. In his capacity as a clergyman, Grimes issued false baptism certificates with the help of Richter, who was a verger at the church. They used a loophole in the emigration rules to issue false baptism certificates to Jews without a real baptism ceremony taking place.⁴⁰ Jews were required to pay for one of these baptism certificates, and this money then appears to have been used by Richter to supplement SIS’s meagre finances for operations in the region.

While Christ Church was undergoing repairs that summer, Jews queued outside Grimes’ apartment on Metternichgasse and entered there to learn the Lord’s Prayer and the catechism, so that they had some basic knowledge of Anglicanism if they chanced to be questioned by the German authorities. It was a political baptism, solely to enable them to leave the country. There was no immersion in water and no intention that they should become practising Anglicans. They were issued with a backdated certificate and prayer book as evidence of their baptism. Between 13 March and 25 July, Grimes baptized some 900 Jews, including 93 on 24 July and as many as 224 the following day.⁴¹

By July 1938, Grimes had come under suspicion as a British spy, possibly because of his association with Richter and the fact that Richter was still meeting Tucek. Or perhaps Tucek had merely presumed that Grimes also worked for SIS. Either way, it meant that Grimes was forced to make a swift exit from Vienna, on pretence of a holiday. The Foreign Office debated whether or not to send him back to Vienna later that summer, but this was deemed too risky. In fact, the Gestapo were waiting to arrest him if he re-entered Austria. Instead, 66-year-old Revd Fred Collard arrived in Vienna as Grimes’ replacement. The choice of Collard may not have been totally coincidental: having served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War, he had been posted in 1918 to the British army of occupation in Cologne, where Kendrick was stationed. Thus, the two men may have known each other from then. Collard continued with Grimes’ humanitarian rescue work and with issuing false baptism certificates. The workload was so heavy that he looked for help with the paperwork. Edmund Henry Pollitzer, a 46-year-old Viennese Jew, presented himself with a recommendation from Grimes. He wrote out the baptismal certificates, ready for Collard to sign. From time to time, Pollitzer was given donations for the church by grateful ‘Jewish converts’. Pollitzer was in fact a close friend of Kendrick’s and one of his agents. He himself managed to escape later on a false baptism certificate, but not until the Gestapo had significantly harassed him.

Protecting the family

Vienna became a city where allegiance to Hitler and Nazism was a non-negotiable absolute. Those who were not overtly on the Nazi side were viewed with extreme suspicion. These were dangerous times – and not only for the city’s Jews. Communism was banned and a thousand communists were arrested in the early days of the Anschluss. The danger came closer to home when Kendrick’s daughter and son-in-law were suspected of being Jewish for not draping a swastika flag from their apartment. Kendrick immediately provided them with a Union Flag from the legation, which they promptly hung from the roof of their house. As his granddaughter Barbara recalled:

The flag was so large that it almost reached the pavement. We had to wear tiny Union Jack brooches on our coats, otherwise we would have been mistaken for Jews. We already saw what was happening to Jews. One day, we returned from the park with our nanny Deta, wearing tiny swastika brooches, which we proudly showed our mother. Our friends had been wearing swastika brooches, but preferred our Union Jack ones so we had swapped them. Of course, the swastika brooches were swiftly confiscated.42

Even the homes of foreign nationals were not exempt from Gestapo raids. Kendrick’s grandson, Ken Walsh, recalled:

Things got difficult for us. The Gestapo turned their attention to our household. They banged on the door one day and searched the place to see if we had any Jewish connections. They pulled out all our books and stamped them inside with a swastika. Our pictures and carpets were also stamped.43

By June 1938, Kendrick deemed it no longer safe for his family to remain in Vienna and began arrangements for their travel to the United Kingdom. Their exit from Austria was precipitated by wider threats in the region, with concerns that a German invasion of Czechoslovakia was imminent. That would have impelled the whole region towards war. Son-in-law Geoffrey left for Glasgow, ahead of his wife and family. On 19 July, Gladys and the children (Barbara and Ken), accompanied by the family cook Poldi, said their farewells at Vienna’s main railway station. On the platform to see them off was Edmund Pollitzer, the trusted family friend and one of Kendrick’s agents. Barbara recalls:

For my mother [Gladys], the departure was a terrible wrench because she had spent her formative years in Vienna. We children had only known Vienna for a few years and were embarking on a strange new life. But the Vienna we loved had gone.⁴⁴

There was no question of Kendrick leaving with them. As far as his family knew, he had essential duties as the British passport control officer. Even in summer 1938, they did not realize his true role in SIS. Kendrick remained in Vienna with Norah until personal danger the following month decided his fate.

Agents at risk

Events surrounding Czechoslovakia continued to escalate and every diplomatic effort was made that July to prevent an invasion by German forces. Kendrick continued to meet agents and contacts working out of Czechoslovakia who were bringing him intelligence. One of them is believed by his family to have been Willi Bondi. He lived in Brno in Czechoslovakia, a relatively quick train journey from Vienna, which he and his family used to visit regularly on business and to go to the theatres. As great-nephew Peter Barber comments:

Willi’s occupation had always been very vague up until 1938. We did not really know what his work was, and he was regarded by his nieces as benevolent but not particularly bright in comparison with the rest of the family. This may have been subterfuge however, since later the family came to understand that he was a skilful wheeler-dealer.45

Bondi’s two sisters also lived in Brno and were married to two brothers – the Fleischers – who ran a successful import-export business. Leo Fleischer had assets (and presumably contacts) in London.⁴⁶ Sometime during or after 1938, Bondi began to work for the Fleischer business in Brno, probably as a cover for his undercover work. His passport, which survives among family papers, shows repeated border crossings between Czechoslovakia and Austria on 21, 28 and 30 July, and finally on 4 August 1938 – the crucial period, when it was believed the Germans might invade. During these day trips, it is believed that he was passing urgent intelligence to Kendrick.⁴⁷ As Barber recalls:

A clue to my great-uncle Willi’s clandestine work may be ascertained from events which unfolded for Bondi in 1941. He and other members of my family had already been arrested more than once after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. They were accused by the Germans of being communists, but they were, in fact, social democrats. Willi spent four months in prison in 1940 and was subjected to two sets of interrogations again in 1941: one because he had befriended a German soldier who was homosexual, although he did not have a relationship with him. The Germans may have suspected that Bondi was gaining military intelligence from the soldier. The second political interrogation could have been due to German suspicions that Bondi was working for British intelligence, probably for Kendrick in 1938. The interrogation reports make it quite clear that he had been arrested, not because of his Jewish background, but because of other activities. A telling point is that Bondi was shot in Auschwitz on 30 August 1941 for political reasons, and not as a Jew. For us as a family, it is difficult to be sure about certain aspects of his life. There is a sense that something was going on because of his travels. Finding a paper trail has been elusive because of the nature of his undercover work, believed to have been conducted from Brno and passed through meetings with Kendrick or an intermediary in Vienna.48

It is highly probable (but not certain) that other members of the Fleischer family had contact with Kendrick, too.

On 2 August 1938, a case was reported to Kendrick that related to an Australian couple, Mr and Mrs Cecil Rhodes-Smith, who had been stopped at the frontier town of Neu Bentschen (today, Zbąszynek in Poland) because the border guards mistakenly thought they needed a special visa as British subjects.⁴⁹ When it was made clear to the authorities that, as Australian citizens, they did not legally require a visa to travel, they were permitted to cross the border and continue on their journey. Although they were both Australian by nationality, Cecil Rhodes-Smith had been born in Cape Town, South Africa, circa 1896 and was of the same generation as Kendrick. While the couple were not detained on suspicion of espionage, it is possible that they had connections to Kendrick and may have been one of his contacts. For this Australian couple to have been travelling in parts of Nazi Germany on holiday seems perhaps more than mere coincidence. Rhodes-Smith was the managing director of Felt and Textiles of Australia Ltd, was a pioneer in wool carbonizing in the country and a wool exporter.⁵⁰ The nature of his business at that time would have provided legitimate cover for him to occasionally pass information back to the British.

A German invasion of Czechoslovakia was averted by the signing of the Munich Agreement a few months later, in September 1938, by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. To appease Hitler and avoid a war with Germany in autumn 1938, for which Britain was ill-prepared, Chamberlain conceded the Sudetenland to Germany, in return for the non-invasion of Czechoslovakia. In the weeks prior to Munich, however, as the diplomatic wheels were turning behind the scenes, a crisis was brewing that would place the whole SIS network in Europe at risk.

Betrayal

In the months following the Anschluss, Karl Tucek continued actively to gather damning evidence against Richter and Kendrick. Although he still did not know Kendrick’s real name, he continued to meet Richter regularly, and Richter had no suspicions that anything was amiss. By June 1938, Tucek was working for another Abwehr agent, Captain Sokolowski of the German navy and head of the Abwehr station at Wilhelmshaven, although ultimately he was still with the Abwehr station in Vienna (Ast. Wien) under Major Rohleder. Tucek used a number of aliases, including Touceck, Tull and Tullinger.51 His role was now exclusively to provide ‘chickenfeed’ to the British on the naval shipyard at Wilhelmshaven and the Schichau-Werke. Abwehr correspondence between a German naval officer named Otto Schulz and Lieutenant Colonel Bamler referred to ‘a GV-Mann [secret service man] belonging to Ast. Wien who was passing chickenfeed to the British on the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau’.⁵² These two battleships were high on Kendrick’s list for intelligence. The ‘GV-Mann’ mentioned was certainly Tucek/Tullinger. Bamler signed off all chickenfeed on behalf of Admiral Canaris (the head of the Abwehr) as the highest ranking of Canaris’s staff. Bamler endorsed the information that was passed from Tucek to Richter for Kendrick. Construction was under way at Wilhelmshaven on another German battleship, Tirpitz. Kendrick expected to receive information from Tucek on its strength, armour and capacity.

On 17 July 1938, Richter met Tucek for what turned out to be their final encounter. Afterwards, Tucek filed his report with his Abwehr handler, with devastating consequences. The Abwehr held onto the information, so that it could strike at Kendrick at a time of its choosing. The Tucek affair would soon have ramifications for Kendrick’s whole network and for SIS agents in passport offices across Europe. For decades, speculation was rife that it was Kendrick’s colleague Dick Ellis who had been the double agent who had betrayed him and the SIS network.53 Ellis always denied this, and it has never been proved. Ellis later argued that a lack of formal intelligence training had led him to inadvertently give away the SIS network to Berlin-based Russian agents, who (unbeknownst to him) were working for German intelligence. However, new research undertaken for this book clearly demonstrates that Kendrick was betrayed by Tucek, not Ellis.

At this time, Kendrick received notification that the British legation and passport control office in Vienna would close, because Austria was now part of the Third Reich and visa business was to be transferred to Berlin. In the end, it did not close that summer. As Prudence Hopkinson recalls:

My mother and other staff at the passport office started to pack because they understood that it was about to close. We prepared to leave Vienna. It was suggested that they all have a last holiday with the Kendricks in Austria before everyone left the country. They agreed to meet instead at Amiens in France, rather than remain in Austria, which was becoming too dangerous. But events overtook their holiday plans.⁵⁴

On Saturday, 13 August, the secret police arrested Richter on the Elisabeth-Promenade, just after he had locked up the British passport office. He was found to be carrying a large sum of cash, amounting to 1,000 Reichsmarks, in an envelope marked ‘Capt. Kendrick, Brit. Passport Office’. News of Richter’s arrest did not reach the British legation until the Monday morning.

Gainer made immediate enquiries and was informed by the Gestapo that Richter had been arrested on suspicion of contravening currency regulations by being in possession of an extraordinarily large amount of money for a minor official of a passport office.⁵⁵ Possibly suspecting that he could be at risk, Kendrick made preparations to leave Vienna on the pretence of a three-week holiday to England with his wife. They planned to leave by the end of the week because, had they left immediately, they would have aroused suspicion.

The Gestapo provided reassurance to Gainer that Richter’s case would be dealt with quickly and their investigations concluded by the end of the week. Gainer established from private discussions with the Gestapo that Richter had been under suspicion for some time for allegedly undertaking dishonest financial transactions, by extracting money in return for visas. The Gestapo said that this money was rightfully due to the Third Reich and that Richter would face criminal charges. Gainer realized that this explanation was untrue, as Richter had been arrested specifically by No. 3 Section of the Gestapo, which was responsible for counter-espionage. Gainer now feared that this was not, in fact, a criminal investigation, but that Richter’s activities as an agent for SIS had been uncovered.

Richter’s nationality was a further complicating factor. Shortly after the Anschluss, Gainer’s predecessor had issued Richter with a British passport to protect him from arrest, because of his Jewish background. Richter’s original application form for the British passport was found to have been incorrectly completed and his claim to British nationality was based on his apparent naturalization in Great Britain in 1908. Gainer wrote to Ambassador Henderson in Berlin that there may have been special reasons why his predecessor had granted Richter a British passport: ‘I consider it advisable to regard him as of dual nationality and while keeping in touch with the police on the matter to allow the case to take its natural course.’56

It was clear from Gainer’s approach of leaving Richter to his fate that the Foreign Office was not going to jeopardize the SIS network by raising further objections to Richter’s arrest. John Back of the Passport Control Department in London arrived in Vienna to relieve Kendrick during his three-week holiday. En route back to England, Kendrick had originally planned a two-day break in Salzburg, stopping briefly at the ski resort of Kitzbühel, before travelling to Amiens in France to meet up with his secretaries, Holmes and Stamper. The secretaries had already left Vienna for Kitzbühel, where Kendrick’s predecessor Alban Ernan Forbes-Dennis and his wife Phyllis Bottome were running a finishing school at the Tennerhof.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, 16 August 1938, tired and strained from months of intense work at the passport control office, Kendrick left his apartment in Vienna with Norah. The arrest of Richter just days earlier had made Kendrick edgy. His long-serving and loyal chauffeur, Herr Bernklau, drove them to a hotel near Innsbruck for an overnight stop. That same evening, the Gestapo called at Kendrick’s apartment in Vienna to find it empty. They learned that Kendrick and his wife had already left the city. All frontier posts were immediately notified.

Kendrick and Norah left the hotel at Innsbruck at dawn the following morning, Wednesday, 17 August. It was a two-hour journey and 180km to the border town of Freilassing. On the way, an unidentified vehicle swerved at the car and tried to force it off the road. This unsuccessful assassination attempt confirmed to Kendrick that his life was in danger. He ordered Herr Bernklau to drive non-stop to the border.

It was 8 a.m. as they finally neared Freilassing.57 An unexpected checkpoint blocked the road. Sitting in the back of the car, Kendrick strained to see ahead.

‘Damn!’ he muttered to Norah.

The guard’s hand went up and the car slowed to a halt. Kendrick was ordered out and the car was searched thoroughly. Norah was allowed to return to Vienna with Bernklau, while Kendrick was escorted separately back to Gestapo headquarters in Vienna.

The Gestapo finally had the elusive SIS spymaster.