Enemies in their new homeland

Refugee Gerti Blumenfeld reads work by Karl Wolfskehl, the 'exiled poet' she met in Auckland. Photo / Dean Purcell

For the free-spirited teenager in the early years of World War II, the signals were unmissable that she was a German Jew.

She could not own a radio or a camera. Her family were not allowed to take the bus.

One summer's day, while swimming with friends in a river, she glimpsed in the rushes a policeman, watching her through his binoculars.

"Maybe they thought we were signalling a U-boat."

This was not Nazi-occupied Europe but Opotiki, New Zealand - as far from Hitler as you'd think it possible to get.

Gerti Stern wanted to become a teacher but, as an "enemy alien" refugee from Germany, would need special clearance before she could go to training college in Auckland.

Her father, Albert, had bought the local hardware store but was not allowed to sell ammunition, among other restrictions.

Albert Stern fled Berlin after the Nazis began rounding up Jewish men, and he took Gerti to England.

They arrived in Auckland in pouring rain in August 1939 but needed a permit before Gerti's Dutch-born mother and brother, who remained in Berlin, could join them.

This was not straightforward, recalls Gerti, who became Gerti Blumenfeld, and now lives in the Auckland suburb of Meadowbank, aged 84.

"The daughter of a cousin of my father was married to an English barrister who came here on a case. He went to see someone in Wellington and the permit was obtained. We had to pay a lot of money"

For Ronny Bruell, appreciation that he was "different" would come at school.

"I have this vivid memory of a school function where all the kids were asked to bring a plate," says Bruell, 68. "Most kids brought a sponge or shortbread or scones.

My mother, who was an exceptional cook, made a typical Viennese biscuit - crescent-shaped with nuts and almonds.

"When the function ended, a teacher called me over and said 'here's the cake your mother made - take it home'. No one was prepared to eat it. I felt so humiliated."

The experiences of Jewish refugees who came to New Zealand as Europe descended into madness are told in Promised New Zealand by Freya Klier, a German activist film-maker and author.

First published in Germany as Gelobtes Neuseeland, it has been translated by Auckland-based translator Jenny Rawlings.

Klier traced the journeys of 24 refugees - from their often harrowing escapes to their experiences in a distant new homeland.

Several books have recounted the courage of individual Jews who escaped the Holocaust and came to New Zealand. Klier's work finds common threads and adds context to such stories: contrasting the escalating nightmare in Europe with the closed shop that was New Zealand.

The Jewish influence is now so ingrained in commerce, education, the arts and community life that it goes unmentioned - we think nothing that our Prime Minister is the son of a Jewish refugee mother.

But New Zealand in the 1930s and 1940s treated these "foreigners with accents" with suspicion.

Klier reveals a story of official and unofficial barriers, of culture shock for the refugees, and of insularity which boiled over into anti-semitism.

Many of the refugees struggled to adapt or were consumed with guilt as they battled fruitlessly to obtain permits for loved ones left behind. Most knuckled down to work; some who arrived penniless would rise to prominence in business, education or the arts. Some would long to return to Europe but most would display only gratitude towards the country which reluctantly took them in.

Bruell was born into this environment in Auckland in 1941. His parents, Fritz and Lilly, had fled Austria then Czechoslovakia ahead of German annexation. Their story is one of the book's more triumphant.

Czech-born Fritz worked in his uncle's paper firm near Vienna, Austria, where he married Lilly, a tailor's daughter from an Orthodox Jewish family.

As Hitler's oppression extended, they became politically active, helping Jews escape persecution. They would lend their passports to help Jews of similar age and appearance leave Europe.

The passports were returned by courier and the process would start again. Their high-risk work continued when they escaped pro-Nazi Austria for Brno, Czechoslovakia.

Bruell says he learned of his parents' involvement in people-smuggling only through Klier's research. "Some things were sensitive - there were aspects of my parents' early life that they didn't want to talk about.

"My father was pretty modest when it came to talking about himself. But it would have been typical of them to put others before themselves."

As German takeover loomed, Fritz learned his name was on a Nazi list and fled to London. Lilly made four escape attempts before finally joining him. In England, Fritz continued to assist refugees until his own family was given a visa to New Zealand.

"They talked a lot about their reception and in some cases they were very bitter," says Bruell. "Some who came here had contacts or relatives and housing and jobs were arranged. My parents had only a £15 loan from the British Government and the clothes on their back.

"New Zealand was so different to what they were used to in Europe - it was [work] 9 to 5, Monday to Friday and rugby on Saturday.

"The Europeans had a different way of life, so they did stand out as foreigners. They had a different accent, a different concept of working and living and they ate different foods.

"There was this mistrust: are they spies? Are they doing things for the Germans under the noses of the British?"

Yet the couple would build up one of New Zealand's pioneer manufacturing export firms, Rex Manufacturing, and Lilly was one of the first to export clothing to Asian countries.

Intolerance towards non-British immigrants was nothing new, as Klier's book points out.

Unemployment lingered for some years after the Great Depression and jobs were jealously guarded. The few German refugees admitted in the late-1930s included many doctors and dentists - prompting the Medical Association to campaign against entry of "non-Aryans".

As Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage put it in 1937: "Our primary duty is to our British citizens."

After the outbreak of war, life grew more difficult for the refugees. Immigrants were assessed for their possible threat to security. Those from Germany were classified as enemy aliens; others had restrictions placed on them. Many foreigners were required to live a set distance from airports, harbours and military sites.

"This is a heavy emotional burden to bear for those who have been harshly stigmatised in their home country," writes Klier. " ... Everything is scrutinised - the location of their homes, their work situation, their possessions."

Attempts to extract parents and siblings from Nazi-occupied countries came to nothing. "The New Zealand Government's decision may be due to self-protection but for almost all of those left behind it is tantamount to a death sentence."

As the war drew to a close, our xenophobia increased. The RSA called for foreigners to be barred from buying inner-city properties.

The Truth attacked the "underhand relentless invasion of swarms of foreigners, slippery as eels, who have seized the opportunity by the horns and bought up small businesses ..." Medical associations accused Jewish doctors of stealing the practices of New Zealand medics away serving their country.

Fritz Bruell by now had changed his first name to Fred. Drawing on his background in his uncle's paper factory, he became manager in Hugo Johnston's cardboard box firm. But he was determined to start his own business and worked after hours, manufacturing first drawing pins then penholders, protractors and other stationery items.

"He was an innovator in the design and development of new products," says Ronny Bruell. "If he saw a problem he would design a way around it."

After the war, Rex Manufacturing continued to diversify and became the largest manufacturer listed on the Stock Exchange. Fred Bruell would go on to lead trade delegations and became president of the Export Institute. He became a director of Air New Zealand and was active in the Labour Party.

"He was a brilliant administrator - very entrepreneurial - but he was also a champion of the underdog. In the history of our companies, no one was made redundant because of lack of work."

Lilly Bruell, while raising three children, worked for a clothing manufacturer before launching her own company, Playnit. Later, her Viva Capri swimwear label was sold in Australia and Southeast Asia.

Her son says attitudes gradually eased towards the refugees, though he still occasionally encountered racism at school. "It was not in the context of European anti-Semitism. It was more in ignorance - in stupidity."

Bruell's parents became benefactors to the Jewish community, despite the suspicious welcome they received from the established English Jewry.

"I think if there was an advantage in being a European Jew, it was that 80 to 90 per cent came with nothing and their survival depended on their ability to earn," he says.

"There was a determination to be successful but not in a monetary sense. There was no desire to have the biggest house or the biggest car. It was just a matter of proving yourself in a beautiful country that had given the Europeans a home."

Promised New Zealand by Freya Klier, Otago University Press, $45.