When a non -serious Indian helped Austrian Jews escape from the Nazis

“Allow me to tell you a secret. Your Nana (Grandpa) helped Jewish families escape from the Nazis. “

This single sentence from his mother made Vinai Gupta on a trip to his grandfather’s past. What he found was a tale more fascinating than fiction: a little known act of heroism from an Indian businessman who risks everything to save strangers at the darkest hour in Europe.

It was not just compassion; It was logistics, risk and determination. In India, Kundanlal has created a business to hire Jews, build homes to shelter them – just to watch the British declare them “enemy aliens” and to detain them after two war broke out.

Kundanlal’s life is read as an epic: a poor boy from a lull, married at the age of 13, who sold everything-from timber and salt to laboratory facilities and wheels with carts. He also runs a business with a match and a match factory. He headed his class in Lahore – joining the colonial civil service at 22, just to resign from all this to participate in the movement for freedom and life of construction factories.

He is shaking with the Indian leader of Independence, and later his first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nerru and crossed the paths with actress Devika wounds on a steamer to Europe.

In a rescue in Vienna, a family memoir, Gupta reveals the unusual Indian rescue of his grandfather on foreign soil – collected through family letters, interviews for surviving and historical records.

In the shadow of the Austria annexation of 1938 of Hitler, Kundanlal, a manufacturer of machine tools from the city of Lubriciana in the northern state of Pendjab, quietly offered jobs to Jewish professionals in India to receive life -saving visas. He offered work, provided livelihood and build homes for these families in India.

Kundanlal saved five families.

Fritz Weiss, a 30-year-old Jewish lawyer, was hiding in hospital and admired illness. Kundanlal was also in the same hospital to be treated for illness.

After the Nazis forced Weiss to clean the streets in front of his own home, Kundanlal filed him a rescue line: an offer to work at the fictional Kundan agencies. This received a visa to India.

Alfred Wachler, a master wooden worker, met with Kundalus until he brought his pregnant wife for tests. Promised a future in the furniture and a sponsor of emigration, his family became one of the Jewish households that reached India between January 1938 and February 1939.

Hans bad, textile technician, answered Kundanlal’s ad in an Austrian document for qualified workers. He offered a management role in the imaginary Kundan Platt Mill in Ludhiana – with housing, a share of profit and a safe passage – he took advantage of the opportunity to start over.

Alfred Shaffranek, once the owner of a plywood factory of 50 employees, directed his Kundanlal skills and was offered a role in the construction of the most modern plywood ward in India. His whole family, including his brother, Mechanic Siegfried, was rescued.

And Siegmund Retter, a businessman of machine tools, was among the first to close Kundanlal. While his business collapsed under Nazi government, Kundalus began to settle his relocation to India to start again.

It all started with a hospital bed in Vienna.

Struggling with diabetes and hemorrhoids, Kundanlal, then 45, sought new treatments and read as a specialist in Vienna. In 1938, as he recovered from the operation there, he met with Lucy and Alfred Wachler, a young couple awaiting his first child. He learned from them about the growing anti -Semitic violence and the destruction of Jewish life.

Over the next few months, he met with other men. Encouraged by this success, Kundanlal has put advertisements for newspapers seeking qualified workers ready to move to India. The respondents included Wachsler, Losch, Schafranek and Retter. KundanLal has offered every job, financial guarantees and support to secure Indian visas.

“The striking aspect of all the complex schemes of Kundal on behalf of these families was how close he was, maintaining the emergence of a technological transfer in India to the very end,” Gupta wrote.

“He did not share his intention or plans with Indian or British officials. His family learned about his plans only when he returned home months later.”

In October 1938, Bad became the first of Kundanlal’s recruits to arrive in Lubriciana.

He was greeted at Kundanlal’s home – but found a little comfort in the quiet city, Gupta writes. Without a Jewish community, no cultural life and fighting a fabric mill, bad, left within weeks for Bombay (now Mumbai), citing poor working conditions and a little chance of profit. He never returned.

Weiss lasted even less – just under two months. The company created for him, agencies in Kundan, never took off. He soon moved to Bombay, found a job in flooring and had moved to England until 1947.

Despite his departments, Kundanlal does not resent, Gupta writes.

“My aunt told me that on the contrary, Kundanlal was embarrassed that he could not provide a lifestyle and social environment, more appropriate for Vienna and thought that if there were, the two men might have stayed in Ludhiana.”

Not all stories ended this way.

Alfred and Lucy Wachler, with their infant son, arrived by sea, railway line and road – finally coming off the train to the Lubriciana.

They moved to a spacious Kundanlal home built for them next to another, prepared for Schafraneks. Alfred quickly created a furniture workshop using Burmese teak and local Sikhist work to make elegant dining sets – one of which still survives in the author’s family.

In March 1939, Alfred Saffron, his brother Siegfried and their families arrived from Austria. They launched one of the most plywood factories in India in a shed behind the two homes.

Driven and demanding, Alfred pressed hard for untrained workers, determined to build something durable. Gupta writes, the work was intense, the unknown heat of Punjab and the insulation – especially for women, limited to home life.

Over the months in Ludhiana, the initial relief gave way to boredom.

Men worked for long hours, while women, limited by language and isolation, kept home combinations.

In September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Days later, the UK has declared war on Germany – the British Parliament has drawn India into the conflict. More than 2.5 million Indians would serve in the war, 87,000 have never returned.

In Ludhiana, the reality of the war hit quickly.

Until 1940, the new policies ordered all German citizens – Jewish or not – in internal camp camps.

Wachsler and Schafranek families were forcibly moved to the Puranhar internation camp near Poona (now Pune), housed in bare barracks with kerosene lamps and minimal amenities. They did not commit a crime – they only carried the wrong passport.

In the end, the release was possible – if they were able to find a paid job.

Alfred and Siegfried Shafnik secured roles, managing a new plywood business in Bangalore and moving there with their families, starting from the beginning. The Wuchler family left the camp in 1942 after Alfred found a job in Karachi. The two families never met again.

Purahar Camp closed in 1946, nearly a year after the war was over.

In 1948, Alfred Wachssler’s cousin sponsored American visas for family refugees. This October they took off from Karachi, never returned to India. Schafraneks moved to Australia in 1947 after a successful plywood venture in Bangalore.

As he was exploring the book, Gupta met with Alex Wahser, whose father Alfred had also built the Burman Kundalnal Bureau, once used in his small 120 -square -foot office. (Alfred died in 1973)

“Although he has lived in us from the age of 10, and now at his eighties, Alex Wailer still fights for his life in India, eats in Indian restaurants, enjoys meeting the Indians and surprises them with his knowledge of Urdu,” Gupta writes.

Back to Lubriciana, Kundanlal opened a school for his daughters at home, soon expanded it to one of Pengjab’s most old schools – still conducted with 900 students. His wife Saraswati is becoming more and more withdrawing and struggling with depression.

Kundal and Saraswati had five children, including four daughters. In 1965, Saraswati died after a tragic fall from their terrace. She spent her last years in silence, emotionally remotely from the family. Kundanlal died a year later, at 73, from a heart attack.

“The term” passive observer “was Kundanlal’s anathema. If he saw something or someone who demanded attention, he was present, he never was intimidated by the enormity of the problem,” Gupta writes.

A suitable epitaph for a person whose heritage was not only a business, but a quiet challenge, compassion and conviction.