Published: 16 August 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
ON A COLD MORNING in March 1941, when it was still very much winter in Sweden and Hitler was gaining ground across Europe, a 22-year-old nurse named Ilse Ganz Koppel boarded a train in her hometown of Stockholm together with 60 Jewish refugee children. Along with three other adult chaperones, they set out over land and sea toward British Mandatory Palestine.
“Everybody was engaged to help. You don’t know what it is to have a Nazi regime around you,” says Ganz Koppel, who at the age of 100 has decided to publicly share her account of the dangerous rescue mission that took 16 nerve-fraying days and covered some 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometres).
Ganz Koppel grew up in a prominent Jewish family in the Swedish capital, part of a 7,000-strong community. Many, including Ganz Koppel’s parents, were involved in refugee aid and relief work for their fellow European Jews. She says her father supported her taking on the mission. Most of the community stayed in Sweden, hoping the country’s neutrality would keep them safe despite fears of a possible German invasion.
FULL STORY The wartime rescue you’ve never heard about, told by the 100-year-old Jewish woman who led it (Haaretz)
Photo: Ilse Ganz Koppel in her apartment in a retirement community outside of Jerusalem, July 2019 (Emil Salman)
