ONE OF THE LUCKY ONES `INTO THE ARMS OF STRANGERS' TELLS WARTIME STORY; MADISON MUSICIAN WAS ONE OF 10,000 CHILDREN WHO ESCAPED THE NAZIS [ALL Edition] Madison Capital Times Madison, Wis. Dec 6, 2000 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Authors: Jacob Stockinger The Capital Times Pagination: 1A ISSN: 07494068 Abstract: The 75-year-old Madison violinist is a survivor of the Kindertransport - the humanitarian effort in which 10,000 Jewish children were sent by their parents from Nazi Germany to the safety of adoption and exile in England. ("Into the Arms of Strangers" opens Friday at the Westgate cinema.) "The Kindertransport saved 10,000 Jewish children," she says. "If America had done a similar thing - and they were asked to but they refused - it would have saved 20,000. I don't think any of the children died in England and a lot of Jewish children died in Germany." Caption: DAVID SANDELL/THE CAPITAL TIMES [Miriam Schneider] continues to play the violin she carried out of Germany. Herwartime album shows her at her Scottish boarding school (left) and with her family (right) before they sent her to safety. Inset: Miriam in 1943. "Into the Arms of Strangers" Boys of the Kindertransport entertain themselves on the train in this historic photo from the film "Into the Arms of Strangers." The film opens Friday at Westgate. Copyright Madison Capital Times Dec 6, 2000 Full Text: For Miriam Schneider, "Into the Arms of Strangers" is much more than a movie. It is the story of her life. The 75-year-old Madison violinist is a survivor of the Kindertransport - the humanitarian effort in which 10,000 Jewish children were sent by their parents from Nazi Germany to the safety of adoption and exile in England. ("Into the Arms of Strangers" opens Friday at the Westgate cinema.) More than 60 years later, Schneider, who describes herself as a "generally cheerful" person, talks openly at her west side home about what happened. "It was obvious to most people that Hitler would kill the Jews," she says. "The problem was not leaving Germany but having a place to go." Another family in her hometown of Koningsberg had secured a place on the Kindertransport, which had been organized in 1938 by Quakers in England. But that whole family found a way to leave Germany, so they offered their place to Schneider's family. Her parents, Kurt and Hedwig Wieck, chose her rather than her younger brother Michael because the spot reserved was at an all- girls school in Scotland. "It was also easier to get places for girls," explains Schneider. "They could be used as domestics. And in those days, girls didn't need as much education," which meant they were less expensive to raise for the families who adopted them. Her family hired a tutor to help teach her English. Then, in July 1939, the 13-year-old Schneider and her mother got on a train to Berlin, where connections for the final leg of the trip started. She remembers crying as she and her mother left the station and a man on the train who asked her why she was sad. "I just knew I was never coming back," she says. "That's when it got to me. After that, most of the time I didn't let things get to me. I protected myself. You don't really think about what's happening. You put a shell around yourself." But what she does remember, she remembers vividly. She remembers seeing her brother and father on the platform in Koningsberg as the train pulled away. She remembers taking one suitcase with her, plus a violin - one of her father's most valuable ones, because it was an easy way to get it safely out of the country. She remembers her mother and her cousin buying her gloves in Berlin - "green gloves because it was summertime." She remembers wearing a big tag with a number around her neck, and seeing lots of children - from infants to late teens - like herself, some singing a song that "stabbed me when I heard it in the movie." (Schneider attended the premiere in Berlin.) She remembers arriving in Edinburgh, where she stayed with a family for several weeks until summer vacation was over and she could take up her permanent place at St. Trinnean's, the private boarding school where the headmistress, Miss Lee, had agreed to take several refugees. That's also where she quickly realized she was one of the last children to get out of Germany. "I left in July and on Sept. 3, I was listening to the radio at school and heard that Hitler had invaded Poland," she recalls. "The war had started. It was a brilliant, sunny Sunday." At the beginning, she received letters from home. But once war broke out, all that got through were short messages from the Red Cross. During the war, she pursued her academic and musical studies. She graduated in 1944, then performed her national service as a nurse. "I always was felt like an outsider, but generally I was well treated. They were very kind," she says, adding that she remains in touch with three of her schoolmates. Did she seek shelter in music? "I probably did," she says. "That's what my daughter thinks. You can rescue yourself in music." Compared to the stories of many others in the Kindertransport, whose families perished in Nazi concentration camps, Schneider's story had a happy ending. Her family survived the war, probably, she notes, because while her mother was Jewish, her father was not. "In fact, it was far worse for them as Germans under the Russians than it was as half-Jews under the Nazis," she says. Through a complex series of circumstances, her mother ended up emigrating to Canada; her brother and father stayed in Germany. While in Scotland, she met and married Hans Schneider, a Jewish mathematician whose family had fled Austria and with whom she had three children. She became a free-lance musician and played in the Halle Orchestra under the famous conductor Sir John Barbirolli. They lived for seven years in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where Hans got his first teaching job, and then spent a year in Pullman, Wash. In 1959, Miriam, Hans and the children settled here when he came to teach at the UW-Madison. Schneider says she doesn't go out of her way to tell other people her story, but neither has she hidden it from family and friends. To this day, she remains self-effacing about the whole ordeal. "It took courage not on my part but my mother's," she says. "I was just a good girl who did what I was told. I asked the mothers of my own grandchildren if they could put their children on the train and send them off to strangers like that. They said, `No way.' " Schneider is also modest about her own pain and loss. "I didn't suffer much but my family did, especially under the Russians. I was never hungry and was never without shelter." As for the movie, she says it is an emotional experience for her, but not as hard as the book, which she read first. "That was difficult to get through," she admits. "It brought back memories. It took me a long time to read it." But like the book, she notes, "the movie is totally true. There were probably 10,000 stories, but the dozen or so in the film are representative of what actually happened. It's excellent and I would encourage people to see it. It was a flawed attempt, but it was an attempt. It was something." Moreover, she hopes people who see the film will take important lessons away from it. "The Kindertransport saved 10,000 Jewish children," she says. "If America had done a similar thing - and they were asked to but they refused - it would have saved 20,000. I don't think any of the children died in England and a lot of Jewish children died in Germany." In the end, she adds, the morality of it all is simple: "I would like people to think this could never happen again. But if it did happen and you had the chance to save a life, you might think about it. It could make a difference." Caption: DAVID SANDELL/THE CAPITAL TIMES Miriam Schneider continues to play the violin she carried out of Germany. Herwartime album shows her at her Scottish boarding school (left) and with her family (right) before they sent her to safety. Inset: Miriam in 1943. "Into the Arms of Strangers" Boys of the Kindertransport entertain themselves on the train in this historic photo from the film "Into the Arms of Strangers." The film opens Friday at Westgate. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. =============================== End of Document ================================