Ilse Stanley,, was a German Jewish woman who, with the collusion of a handful of people ranging from Nazi members of the Gestapo to other Jewish civilians, secured the release of 412 Jewish prisoners from Nazi concentration camps between 1936 and 1938. During that time she also helped countless others leave the country while it was still possible for German Jews to do so legally. This story was sketched publicly in 1955 on Ralph Edwards's television program, This Is Your Life, and is told in vivid detail in Stanley's autobiographical book, The Unforgotten, which was published in the United States in 1957.
Early life
Ilse was born in 1906 in the small mining town of Gleiwitz, Germany. The family moved to Berlin when her father, Magnus Davidsohn, was named as the main cantor at the new Fasanenstraße Synagogue being built in the Charlottenburg section of Berlin. The first time she entered the still-unfinished building, Ilse fell deeply in love with this synagogue and her life became thoroughly entwined with this synagogue. As a child of six she had the honor of presenting flowers to the German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm, when he came to dedicate the new temple, which opened on August 26, 1912. Ilse graduated from the Auguste-Victoria-Schule at the age of fifteen. After graduation she continued to study theatre history and theatre science at the Theatre Science Institute and at the Berlin University, while working part-time as a bookkeeper and office manager. Later she studied acting and directing at the Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater and elsewhere. Using the stage name "Ilse Davis", her primary interest was in acting on the stage, although she also played bit parts in several films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Her interest and ambition broadened to include directing and producing, and in 1929, just after turning twentythree, she opened her own theatre organization. In this endeavor she handled everything from theatre production, promotion and publicity, to public relations; she also ran an Academy where entrants were taught acting, directing, and production. Her acting career ended abruptly in 1933, however, as increasing pressure was put onthe Jews by Hitler and his Third Reich and she was no longer able to rent theatres and concert halls. For the next three years, until 1936, she gave recital tours, speaking to her fellow Jews "wherever I was permitted to speak."
Concentration camps
Unable to work at what she loved, and having no hope for matters to improve in the foreseeable future, Ilse became quite discouraged. In 1936, an unexpected set of circumstances led to her making a trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, posing as a social worker and under an assumed name. With falsified release papers, she secured the liberation of her cousin's husband. Having succeeded with this ruse on her first attempt, she continued rescue work for two more years. In order to have a cover-up office from which to do her work, and to provide a legitimate front for getting people out of Germany, she took a volunteer position with the vice-president of the Jewish Community, whom she calls "Mr. Gross" in her book. She worked in the Passports Office, on "the most hopeless" cases. In addition to working out passport issues for people and enabling many Jews to leave the country, she continued her trips to the camps, ultimately securing the release of 412 people before the devastating events of Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht and after: late 1938 and 1939
After Kristallnacht, when more than 200 synagogues all over Germany—including Ilse's beloved "House"—were torched and destroyed, the situation worsened dramatically. By 1939 the Jewish population of Berlin, which had numbered 160,000 in 1933, had dwindled to 75,000. Trips to the camps were out of the question, but Ilse continued helping Jews leave the country legally. She kept in contact with "Fritz", and when the Gestapo began interviewing people planning to leave Germany in order to try to prevent them from leaving, he found a way to warn her. Finally, very reluctantly, Ilse realized that she, along with her family, needed to leave Germany. They left separately: first her father, in March 1939, then her husband, then Ilse and her son Manfred. Five days before Ilse's planned departure, her mother was summoned to the Gestapo on Alexanderplatz. Ilse went in her stead. After her mother's situation was clarified, Ilse made a near-fatal mistake: she mentioned her own impending departure. Questioning ensued, and, having nothing to lose, Ilse spoke quietly and openly. She spoke of living in fear since Kristallnacht, and of the need to live without such fear. Then she talked about presenting flowers to the Emperor at the age of six, about Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication and flight from Germany on November 9, 1918, and about Kristallnacht, which happened exactly twenty years after the Emperor's flight. One of her two interrogators broke down sobbing. She was allowed to leave the office, and three days later, she and Manfred left for England. After a brief stop there, they sailed from Southampton on the SS Deutschland on August 4, 1939, arriving in the U.S. on August 11.
Ilse's work extracting prisoners from the concentration camps has not received much public recognition. A notable exception to this is the 1955 episode of the American television program This is Your Life, featuring Ilse and in particular her rescue work. On that program she was reunited with her father, Magnus Davidsohn, who had been living in England since he left Germany in 1939.
