A plaque honouring the memory of British officials and Anglican clergy who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis was unveiled at the British embassy in Vienna.
The ceremony was led by Lord Pickles, the government’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues and co-chair of Britain’s Holocaust Memorial Foundation, and the president of the Austrian parliament Wolfgang Sobotka.
The diplomats and clergy went into action after the Anschluss of March 1938 when Hitler’s troops annexed Austria.
It was an emotional morning at the embassy for Britain’s ambassador to Austria, Lindsay Skoll, who told attendees she had often found herself close to tears reading the accounts of those whom British diplomats and clergymen had tried to save.
Following the Anschluss, the British Embassy in Vienna near the Belvedere Palace was downgraded to the status of consulate-general.
Its passport team, led first by Thomas Kendrick and then George Berry, worked in tandem with clergy from the Anglican Christ Church in Vienna — located across the street from the embassy — to provide travel documents and baptismal certificates to Austrian Jews looking to escape Nazi persecution.
Beginning on 14 June 1938, Revs Hugh Grimes and Frederick Collard conducted hundreds of baptisms — around 1,800 in total — in order to afford Jews temporary protection and make it easier for them to leave the country.
The embassy’s diplomatic team, meanwhile, defied orders and exploited loopholes in the system to issue travel permits and emergency passports.
Tens of thousands of Jewish lives are believed to have been saved thanks to the endeavours of Vienna embassy staff and Anglican clergy.
