The Leica is the  pioneer 35mm camera. It is a German product – precise, minimalist, utterly efficient. Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was  a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with  uncommon grace, generosity and modesty.

Ernst Leitz II, the steely-eyed Protestant patriarch who headed  the closely held Leica-producing  firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, was essentially the photography industry’s  Schindler.  As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in  1933, Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates,  asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country.  As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany’s  Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited  their professional activities. To help his Jewish workers and  colleagues, Leitz quietly established “the Leica Freedom Train,” a covert means of allowing  Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned  overseas.  Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family  members were “assigned” to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong  and the United States, Leitz’s activities intensified after Kristallnacht in November 1938, when synagogues and Jewish  shops across Germany were burned.  Before long, German “employees”  were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making  their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly  found them jobs in the photographic industry.  The  refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of  this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers  and writers for the photographic press.

The “Leica Freedom Train” was at its height in 1938 and early  1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then,  with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its  borders. By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to  America, thanks to the Leitzes’ efforts. How did  Leitz II and his staff  get away with it? Leitz, Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that brought credit to the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced  range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the  Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and  Leitz’s single biggest market for optical goods was the United  States. Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their  good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help  Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe. Leitz’s  daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland.  She  eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of  questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the  living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave laborers, all of them women,  who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940s. (After  the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts,  among them the Officier d’honneur des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and  the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970s.)

Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a  freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its  heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did  the “Leica Freedom Train” finally come to light. However, it is now the subject  of a book, “The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom  Train,” by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born rabbi currently living in  England. Feel free to pass this info on to others: Memories of the righteous should live  on.