Lone Actors (Einzelgänger)

Oliver Bryk

Thank you for sharing this information with us. There are probably many more courageous actions performed by "lone actors" who did not participate in group resistance and whose effectiveness did go unnoticed.

I wonder if you would like to update the umbrella project to include the examples you describe above ?

Better still even, if you know names of any of these "loners" lets add them to the list of profiles in the appropriate project. It's never too late for acknowledgement of the importance of slowing down the German war machine in this way.

It brings a smile to my face.......!

Thank you for sharing Oliver Bryk. I love learning of such things and the bravery that people had in the face of such darkness.

The first thing that comes to mind, is Burt Lancaster's movie, "The Train"...

I thank all of you for your comments.

How would I update the umbrella project?

I did not know the name of any lone actor during the war. In a couple of chance encounters both of us avoided giving any sign of recognition and quickly separated as far as possible. I think that some stories surfaced after the war but I just don't remember "who-what-where-when".

"The Train" is a fine example of a spectacular action.

Oliver Bryk Thank you so much for pointing out this critical fact. Perhaps we could indeed create sub-projects that highlight lone heroes and heroines. eg. Women in the Resistance.

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance ...
 By Kathryn J. Atwood

(Scroll down and Read) http://books.google.com/books?id=yN_17svfqSQC&printsec=frontcov...

GERMANY:
Sophie Scholl / The white Rose,
Maria von Maltzan/ Countess who Hid Jews . . . Page 24

POLAND:
Irene Gut/ Only a Young Girl
Irena Sendler: Life in a Jar
Stefania Podgorska / The Teen who Hid Thirteen . . . Page 49

FRANCE
Marie-Madeleine Fourcade / Only a Woman
Andree Virto / Agent Rose
Josphine Baker / Spy Singer
Magda Trocme / Wife, Mother, Teacher, Rescuer . . . Page 82

THE NETHERLANDS
Diet Eman / Courier for the Dutch Resistance
Hannie Schaft / The Symbol of the Resistance
Johtje Vos / A Group Effort
Corrie ten Boom / Watchmkaer, Rescuer, Reconciler . . . Page 116

BELGIUM
Andree de Jongh / The Comet Line
Hortense Daman / Partisan Courier
Fernande Keufgens / The Teen with the Bold Voice . . . Page 141

DENMARK
Monica Wichfeld / Irish Heroine of the Danish Resistance
Ebba Lund / The Girl with the Red Cap . . . Page 158

GREAT BRITAIN
Noor Inayat Khan / Royal Agent
Nancy Wake / The White Mouse
Pearl Witherington / The Courier who became a Leader . . . Page 184

THE UNITED STATES
Virginia Hall / the Most Dangerous Allied Agent
Muriel Phillips / U.S. Army Nurse
Marlene Dietrich / "The Only Important Thing"
Maria Gulovich / Slovak for the OSS
Martha Gellhorn / War Correspondent . . . Page 229

Oliver Bryk We can help you update the umbrella project if there is something you wish to add.

Wendi,

I was merely responding to Pam's question.

I'm not sure how and where my examples would fit.

Ok Oliver Bryk Just letting you know we can help you should you decide you wish to make edits.

I read this a few months back...(from USA TODAY)...
I think this fits right in.....

"Monopoly: The game that helped WWII POWs escape"

(NEWSER) – Monopoly was more than a game for many World War II POWs, who used tools hidden in the boxed sets to help them escape. Christian Donland at Eurogamer looks deeply into the life of a high-strung, eccentric British intelligence officer named Clayton Hutton, who designed the escape tools and had them shipped to POWs in Monopoly games.

The boxes arrived from phony charities with clues in their letterhead, like the Biblical lines, "Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." POWs could also spot them by the red dot on the Free Parking space, notes the Atlantic. Inside, they found shears, metal files, a silk escape map, mini-compass, and money in the local currency.

Experts think some 35,000 Allied POWs escaped and made it back home, some presumably with the help of rigged Monopoly sets. But who knows? Hutton was forbidden to mention his ingenious tools, which were government secrets, after all.

Hutton had a nervous breakdown and later died in 1965, most of his work unacknowledged.

His greatest brush with fame likely came as a young man in meeting Harry Houdini, who bet he could escape from a box built by Hutton's colleagues. Houdini won by bribing a carpenter into adding an escape hatch, but Hutton "learned that, when it comes to escape,every trick counts," writes Donland. "Eventually he would put this knowledge ... to work for him in the Second World War."

Click for Donland's full, engrossing article, or click to read about coded letters from a POW that have finally been decoded.

*************************
(Oliver Bryk is Norm Galston's wife's first cousin thrice removed's husband's niece's husband's son's wife's third cousin's ex-husband!)

Very interesting Norm Galston. Think we should get Mr. Hutton on Geni ;-)

Heeey Wendi (cousin???) ....

I still have some more info available on him if you're interested.
I've only added relatives or Jewish Celebrity Birthday's so I would be at a loss????

(FYI: ★ Wendi ★ is Norm's great aunt's niece's husband's niece's husband's sister's husband's brother's wife's second cousin.)

Well, never too late to try something new Norm Galston. Happy to help you if you'd like :))

Malka Mysels great thinking to extend the current topic into sub projects of Lone Actors.

I have a feeling that there could be similar existing project/s on Heroes of WWII and if so then we could just add Lone Actor profiles straight into that project.

Sounds like Norm Galston and
Oliver Bryk both have interesting articles to include.

I had no idea of the game Monopoly serving as escape tools for prisoners. Fascinating story, thank you for sharing it with us. You are correct, the article would "fit right in..."

I apologize for not having expressed myself more clearly. During the war the Lone Actors' survival depended on their anonymity. I don't know how one would identify them after 70 years. One profile would have to do for all.
Oliver

Malka graciously introduced me to the Geni Blog http://www.geni.com/blog/ where I posted some recollections of May 9, 1945 (V-E Day). Perhaps you will get a sense of the value of going it alone.
Oliver

Oliver, I fully understand the lessened risk in "going it alone" with these very important resistance missions. Recollections in the Blog are very descriptive. You write so well !

Thank you for sharing the memories. I would really like to hear more of your "other" life.

Thank you for your kind remarks.
I lived in a world where I and others like me lived by the rule, "trust no one."
I was in elementary school in Vienna when Hitler annexed Austria. From one day to the next I and my Jewish classmates had no more friends in school.

I came across this "Heroine" of sorts and thought perhaps this forum might be a place for her story...
The Santa Monica home of early 20th-century screenwriter "Salka Viertel", was a haven for World War II émigrés fleeing fascism in Europe.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rifkind-salka-viertel-ho...

A former actress in Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin, Salka left Germany for Hollywood in 1928 when her Viennese husband, Berthold Viertel, a director, accepted a contract at Fox. Soon after, their three young sons followed with their nurse, and the family settled down to a comfortable life in the canyon.
Unlike most Americans of the time, Viertel harbored no illusions about the National Socialist epidemic spreading throughout Europe. She quickly turned her house into a haven for hundreds of Jews and anti-Fascists who fled, footsteps ahead of the Nazis, and found themselves, homeless and traumatized, on the shores of the Pacific. An estimated 10,000 refugees from Germany and Austria settled in greater Los Angeles between 1933 and 1941, "the most complete migration of artists and intellectuals in European history," according to historian Kevin Starr.

While anti-Fascist volunteers were spiriting people out of Europe, Viertel in Santa Monica was taking them in. As a co-founder of the European Film Fund, in which studio employees contributed a percentage of their paychecks toward refugee aid, she helped to rescue, among many others, the German Expressionist writer Leonhard Frank, the Dadaist poet Walter Mehring, and Alfred Döblin, author of the acclaimed Weimar novel "Berlin Alexanderplatz."
On Mabery Road, Salka Viertel created a dream of home for those whose homes had been stolen or destroyed.
- Throughout the war, Viertel brokered introductions at the studios for "Nazi scrammers," as Variety dubbed them; she fed them, housed them, reassured them in their native languages — she spoke eight — and absorbed them into her huge circle of Hollywood friends. Perhaps most important, on Mabery Road she created a dream of home for those whose homes had been stolen or destroyed.
Viertel opened her doors on Sunday afternoons — the only day off for Hollywood employees of the time — and welcomed the world. In her book-lined living room, newly arrived emigres were introduced to Thomas Mann and Jean Renoir. Arnold Schoenberg played 12-tone scales on the piano and pingpong on the terrace. Charlie Chaplin was there, and Harpo Marx and Charles Laughton. In her memoirs, Viertel wrote self-effacingly that her house took on the reputation of a literary salon chiefly because of its informality, "and the haphazard intermingling of the famous with the 'not famous' and the 'not yet famous.'"
The Golden Age of Hollywood coincided with the influx of European talent escaping the Nazi's.
The film Casablanca had only 3 American born actors in the entire film...the rest of the cast were immigrants mostly escaping the Nazi's. Dozens of actors with major and minor roles in “Casablanca” had been important movie or theater stars in their native country. The war had them finding their way to America, then Hollywood and finally onto the set of “Casablanca.”
Pauline Kael once said: “If you think of ‘Casablanca’ and of all those small roles being played by Hollywood actors faking the accents, the picture wouldn’t have had anything like the color and tone it had.”
Among those in the film who had fled Germany or other parts of Europe after the Nazi takeover were German stage star Lotte Palfi, who had one line: “But can’t you make it just a little more please?”, Conrad Veidt, (Major Strasser), Peter Lorre (Ugarte) and S.Z. Sakall (Carl the waiter), whose three sisters died in a concentration camp.

Does Salka Viertel have a tree / profile on Geni?

Yes Erica...
Salka ViertelG

This seems to fit right in with the unusual weapons etc., from WW2 and Lord Rothschild:

Nazis Turned Candy Bars Into Secret Weapon
WWII-ERA DRAWINGS REVEAL GERMAN BOOBY-TRAPS

By Neal Colgrass, Newser Staff
Posted Oct 4, 2015 5:00 PM CDT | Updated Oct 4, 2015 5:30 PM CDT

(NEWSER) – First, force the British to endure food shortages—then make them eat exploding candy bars. That was at least part of the Nazi plan to destroy Britain during World War II, according to drawings of German weapons recently seen for the first time, the Smithsonian reports. Among the drawings: a bomb hidden in a motor-oil can and a mess tin of bangers and mash that also held a bomb, per the BBC. Then there's the chocolate bar (viewable in this tweet), which was designed to detonate seven seconds after the chocolate was broken. The Nazis reportedly hoped to assassinate Winston Churchill with such a bar by placing it amid items going into the War Cabinet's dining room, according to a letter discovered in 2009, the Telegraph reported three years ago.

That 1943 letter was written by Lord Rothschild to artist Laurence Fish, who also made the drawings of various Nazi booby-traps. Rothschild—"a larger-than-life character, a scientist and self-appointed expert on many things," the BBC says—was also one third of MI5's counter-espionage unit, along with his secretary (and future wife) and police inspector Donald Fish. Rothschild wanted someone to draw the devices he was finding—in order to create a sort of manual for any Brits who might encounter them—and Fish recommended his son, Laurence, a self-taught draughtsman, the Gloucestershire Echo reports. Long thought lost, the drawings turned up in the home of Rothschild's daughter a few weeks ago.

For more info & Drawings:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nazis-wanted-beat-brits-ex...

"How Nazis Were Fooled by a Fake Typhus Epidemic"

"A doctor wants to prevent disease. But what if the appearance of being sick could save your patient’s life? That’s what confronted two doctors in Rozwadów, Poland, during the Second World War. They knew the Nazis were terrified of typhus, which is highly contagious, and wouldn’t deport typhus patients to German concentration camps.

Dr. Eugene Lazowski (who’d spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp) and his friend, Dr. Stanislaw Matulewicz, discovered that injecting someone with a “vaccine” of dead typhus bacteria would trigger a false positive result for the disease without causing any of the symptoms. Unbeknownst to their patients, they passed on the fake typhus, then sent blood samples to a German-controlled lab. They even tricked a German medical inspection team who arrived, drew blood samples, and quickly fled for fear of infection. A dozen towns in the area were quarantined and 8,000 people were spared from being imprisoned or killed.

Their actions were nearly forgotten in the decades following the war. Lazowski and his family immigrated to Chicago, where he taught medicine, and Matulewicz resettled in Zaire. The doctors finally revealed their secret in a 1977 article, and later published a memoir, “A Private War.” Lazowski was given a hero’s welcome when he finally returned to Poland, just a few years before his death in 2006."

(from a Story By Avishay Artsy)