Bringing home the horror of the Holocaust
Chichester city and district councillor Clare Apel has made an emotional pilgrimage to Vienna where the remarkable British intelligence agent Thomas Kendrick saved both her parents’ lives before the war.
Kendrick was a British spy who rescued more than 10,000 Jews. Clare’s parents Frederick (who changed his name to Stephen after coming to England) and Margery Eisinger were the very first people he saved, receiving from Kendrick the false papers which enabled them to escape with their children,peter,agedthree,and Anthony,aged11months.clare discovered Kendrick’s name a couple of years ago through reading Helen Fry’s book Spymaster:
The Man Who Saved MI6. Now finally, Kendrick has beenhonouredinvienna.clare wasinvitedtotheaustriancapital to attend the unveiling of a plaque in the British Embassy in Vienna commemorating Thomas and his team for the humanitarian work they did. Clare attended with two of her sons, two of her brother Peter’s children and two of her brother Anthony’s children. Had it not been for Kendrick, none of them – including Clare – would have been born.
While in Vienna, Clare also visitedamemorialwall,opened in October 2021 outside the National Bank, where the names of 65,000 Austrian Jews are recorded. Astonishingly, more than 50 of the names are members of Clare's family: “It was emotionally exhausting. I shed a lot of tears. It was so tough to go but it felt so right and I felt it really brought it home to the younger generation just the horror of what happened. You see row upon row upon row of names and they put the name and the date of birth and you look and you see the names of little ones that were born in 1940 or 1939. And you realise they were just children. It really brought home the horror of it, not just in Austria but the horrorofitwhenyouthinkthatthis was being replicated all across Europe.”
“Thomas Kendrick was ostensibly working for the passport office. He was actually the head of the British spy ring. The Nazismarchedintoaustriaand Vienna on March 12 1938 and from then on Thomas’s office was inundated with Austrian Jews desperate to flee from Austria. He gave more than 10,000 Austrian Jews false papers. My parents were the first to receive false papers.”
Clare’s visit underlined just how astonishing the work was that Kendrick and his team did at the embassy: “There were queues of people all the way around just desperate to get out. The staff would go home absolutely exhausted after 18 hours. They would do 200 to 300 of these applications a day forthesedesperatepeoplewho knew that if they didn't get out they would be killed. Thomas and his staff had to face that day after day after day. The Germans used to beat up the Jewish people in the queue or take them away and they were never seen again. It must have been incredibly harrowing but they continued until Thomas was captured.”
Kendrick was interrogated by the Nazis, but the British government managed to get him released. He returned to England, set up a spy network and contributed hugely to the winning of the war.