Issachar Ilan papers

Issachar Ilan (Bernhard Baum ) was born in Gailenkirchen, Germany, near the Dutch border, on November 20, 1926. His father, Leo, was also born in Gailenkirchen, on March 14, 1896. His mother, Erna Roos, was born on December 28, 1899, in Holzhausen, Germany. His younger brother, Otto (Meir), was born on November 18, 1927. His parents had a business distributing agriculture machinery and fertilizer. The family originally came from the Netherlands and had been settled in Germany for generations. There was a large Jewish community in the city; his paternal grandfather was the treasurer of the synagogue which would be destroyed during Kristallnacht. But in his early years, Issachar attended a Catholic kindergarten and a school administered by the Evangelical Church in Gailenkirchen. In the early 1930s, the family moved to Aachen, Germany, to join an uncle who had a textile business. However, as the Nazi Party gained more power after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933, anti-Jewish regulations and anti-Semitism caused the business to falter, as customers began telling them that they could not deal with them anymore. Leo was arrested and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp for several weeks after Kristallnacht in November 1938. Because he had been a soldier in World War I, he was released, on the condition that he leave Germany immediately. He crossed the border and reached Belgium, where he was interned in a Belgian refugee camp. Erna succeeded in selling the textile business; the uncle had left Germany earlier. She received permission to move her household to Brussels, Belgium, where she worked for a Jewish family as a cook. Leo received permission to live with them, but he was promptly deported to the south of France and, as an enemy alien, sent to Gurs detention camp, and then to St. Cyprien. His wife and two sons eventually moved to Marseilles, France, hoping to be near him. Leo was able to leave camp and visit them in the small hotel where they lived from the fall of 1942 into 1943. Issachar and Otto were able to find work in a glue and ink factory and also as waiters’ helpers on La Canniebiere boardwalk. Leo Baum was then transferred to Les Milles detention camp, and it appears that the brothers and their mother were interned at this time. However, since the boys were not 16, Oeuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) [Children’s Aid Society], was able to get them released on the condition that their parents abandoned their guardianship. Issachar and Otto left Les Milles on a bus and said farewell to their parents for the last time. Both parents would be deported and killed in Auschwitz concentration camp. They were sent first to Hotel La Bompard in Marseilles and then to the children’s home of Montintin, where they stayed during the winter of 1943. The brothers were separated when Issachar, who had asthma, became quite ill, developed jaundice, and was sent to live with a peasant family. Otto was sent to an orphanage in Majolier, and in late 1943, was smuggled to Switzerland where he lived with an aunt and was apprenticed in a bakery. Issachar and Otto would remain separated until after the end of the war, but they were able to correspond regularly. Issachar had returned to Montintin and when he recovered, was given false papers under the name Bernard Boime, and sent to work as a cook’s apprentice in a hotel in Rive La Gayard. The accountant there was Jewish and worked for the Maquis, guerrilla bands of the French Resistance. He asked Issachar to help deliver instructions. In April 1944, returning late from a mission, Issachar saw a truck at the hotel, being loaded with Jews for deportation. He had money, since he had been paid that day, so he went to the railroad station and managed to board a train going to Switzerland. When they neared the border, he bought a Michelin guide and jumped off at a small stop before Annecy, France. He knew Annecy, as a border town, was very dangerous for Jews, but he managed to cross under the barbed wire before he was caught and taken to the police station. He gave them his real birth date and German name, Bernhard Baum (Issachar Ilan was the Hebrew version.) He tried twice more to cross the border and was warned that they would have to turn him over to the Germans. However, one of the guards gave him a Swiss franc and said that he would be on duty at a different crossing after midnight. From there, Issachar could cross and walk to Geneva. He did this and found a police station where he turned himself in. He was interrogated for days to learn how he crossed the border. Eventually, after a period of work duty, he was told he could stay in Switzerland. He changed his name to Vernon May, the name of a cousin who had emigrated to Chile. After the war ended, Issachar was associated with the Red Cross, assisting with refugee care until he found a position as an apprentice with the Dutch Government in Exile at the Princess Beatrix Lyceum. An uncle found both brothers in Switzerland after the war. He wanted them to emigrate to the United States, but Issachar and Otto, wanting to honor their parents who had actively supported the Zionist cause, chose to emigrate to Palestine. They arrived on the ship, Maatora, on Rosh Hashana 1945. It was around this time that he changed his name to Issachar Ilan (from Bernhard Baum) and Otto began to use the name Meir. Issachar was sent to Mikveh Yi´sra'el, but could not remain there due to his asthma. He was sent to a home in Jerusalem where he met Tirza Wolff. They married in December 1946.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Issachar Ilan

The papers were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Issachar Ilan.