I was at the end of my rope. I didn’t care any longer what anyone thought or did, but at least I was going to set the record straight. I answered that at no time had I offered money to a consular official (which was true, I had offered money to a Spanish general, not to any Mexican official), that the Consul had been told a lie and that I wanted to see what evidence there was that I had offered such a bribe, for that’s what it clearly was, a bribe which I would never make and whose very existence maligned my reputation. I went on like this at some length when, to my surprise, the Consul finally shook his head and said he would give me the visa after all. With a few swirls of his pen he set down his signature then called on his secretary to place the official stamp on our papers.

I could not believe it myself when I stepped out of the office with the signed documents. I’d done it! I had really, truly, finally done it! We were out of Europe, once and for all!

But nothing is that easy in life. Besides, I still had my brother Moor to worry about.

Somehow or another Moor’s romance with Louise had come to an end and he had been staying with us in Marseilles for a while. The visas the Mexican ambassador had issued covered all of us. so he would have no problem getting into Mexico. My only concern was getting him out of France safely.

France required not only an entry visa but also an exit permit. While in Germany, Moor had been heavily involved with an anti-Nazi youth movement called ”Die Eiserne Front,” which would periodically have run-ins With the black shirts before the National Socialists came to power. We were afraid that the Vichy government had a1ist of all the former members of the Front and that the moment Moor went to ask for his exit permit, the
collaborationist Vichy officials would turn him over to the Nazis. There was no way of smuggling him into the port of Marseilles, as it was well guarded, so we were really at wit’s end on what to do about my brother.

Curiously, getting passage on a ship was not all that difficult, even though it did ultimately cause us some problems.

* Extracted from the book My Story, My Life, By Herman Weitz. Ed.1991

THEODORE SCHWEBEL – FATHER
THERESA SCHWEBEL – MOTHER
HELMUT SCHWEBEL – BROTHER

My father (Theodore Schwebel, born August 3l, 1897) was Jewish, and also a member of the Social-Democratic Party of Austria. A little while after ”Chrystal Night” he fled, taking my brother Helmut (born September 9, l926) with him; they crossed into France illegally at the Franco-German border in Lauterbourg. Meanwhile, my mother Theresa (born 3-3-l902) and I (born 9-l6-28) remained in Purkersdorf (near Vienna) for a few weeks to sell our furniture and domestic items and prepare for the trip. We left Vienna by train on Demember l0, l938, following the same route that my father and brother had used, arriving in Paris on December 22, l938.

My brother and I were installed in a boarding house for Jewish children in Montmorency, near Paris. It was run by the international organization OSE. My mother found work in the same boarding house.

Close to a year later, when war was declared between France and Germany, my father was confined as a ´´citizen of an enemy state´´ in a French concentration camp´. And, in June l940, when German troops had already approached Paris, my mother, brother and I fled to Montauban in the South of France. With the disintegration of the French civil authorities, my father was able to leave the camp and be reunited with us in Montauban. From that moment on, the family goal was to get a visa-any visa from whatever country possible. The only practical possibilities were Mexico and New Zealand, now that ´´quotas´´ for other countries like the United States or England were complete, or that the corresponding bureaucratic paperwork was too slow.

Finally, on November 6, l94l, Mr. Gilberto Bosques, the Mexican Consul in Marseille gave us a visa for Mexico. If it hadn’t been for the anti-fascist position of the Mexican government, as well as the personal initiative of Mr. Bosques to save the largest number of people possible whose lives were threatened by fascism, my family and I probably would not have survived.

Mexican Jewish social-democratic organizations financed our passage in the ”Nyassa” from Lisbon to Veracruz, Mexico, that sailed during the first days of February l942. We had tried to cross from France to Spain various times without success. On one attempt to cross the frontier, we left from
Pau the 3lst of December l94l. The frontier was open and we boarded the train to initiate our journey of two days to Lisbon. After staying one month in the Portuguese capital, and one month on the Nyassa, we arrived in Veracruz where we were taken in as political refugees.

More than 50 years later, in November l993, it was a moving experience for me as well as a great honor to participate in the discovery of the bust of Gilberto Bosques in the ´´Institute of Legal Asylum and Public Liberties´´ in Coyoacan, Mexico City. The ceremony was organized by the ´´Institute for German-Mexican Inter-cultural Research´´, and by the community of German-speaking exiles in Mexico, as recognition of the humanitarian deeds of Mr. Gilberto Bosques.