By Jerry Klinger
BOYNTON BEACH, Florida — A modest historical marker of memory and honor was added on Tuesday, April 13 without ceremony, to the Holocaust Rescuer’s Wall in Golder’s Green, London. The marker recognizes a forgotten woman who saved thousands of lives in the early years of the Holocaust.
Marie Schmolka, a Jewish Czech feminist, humanitarian, and activist, paid for saving so many lives with her own life.
Marie Schmolka was a remarkable woman.
The marker text reads:
“Marie Schmolka was the only Czechoslovak representative at the Evian conference of July 1938, which focused on the Jewish refugee crisis. After the Munich agreement of September 1938, together with Doreen Warriner, she organised the Kindertransporte scheme that brought in Sir Nicholas Winton. . Schmolka was arrested by the Gestapo and gruelingly interrogated, her life at extreme risk. The Nazis exiled her to Paris, conditional upon her removing as many Jews as possible from Czechoslovakia. With the fall of France, she escaped to London, where she lived with the noted British Pacifist and Humanitarian Mary Sheepshanks, in Gospel Oak, London. By now, her health had been broken by her extreme efforts to save Jews and others from the Nazis. She died, age 47. Marie Schmolka saved thousands upon thousands of lives. Marie Schmolka 1893 – 1940 Czech Jewish feminist, social worker, and organizer of aid for refugees from Nazism. Chair of the Czech National Coordinating Committee for Refugees that harbored tens of thousands of political refugees during the 1930s”.
President Calvin Coolidge once said:
“No person was ever honored for what he (she) received.
Honor has been the reward for what he (she) gave.”
Marie Schmolka did not have to remain in Czechoslovakia as it came under Hitler’s threats. She was not under any mandatory Jewish law to risk her life to save others. She chose to stay, to try and do what she could to save Jewish and non-Jewish lives from the darkening horror of approaching Fascism and Nazism.
It is fitting that the ceremony occurred on April 13. That same evening marked Yom HaZichoron. It is Israel’s national day to remember, to honor the fallen soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces who chose to struggle, to defend life and Jewish independence against the forces of anti-Semitism, hatred, and evil. The names are numerous. For one day a year, though they sleep in the gray mist of the past, they are remembered.
The marker for Marie Schmolka, a woman who chose, was donated by The Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation with support from the Marie Schmolka Society.
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Jerry Klinger is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.
Marie Schmolka indeed was a remarkable woman. Thank you for memorializing her!