Many of us may have seen the movie The Sound of Music, where an Austrian family escapes to Switzerland after Nazi occupation, or Schindler’s List, where Oskar Schindler saved many families despite being a Nazi. What if you are told that some Austrian Jewish families were rescued by a Punjabi man named Shri Kundanlal, who was recuperating from surgery in Ruldoph Hospital founded by Theodore Billroth in Vienna way before all this? Kundanlal had no European connections, couldn’t speak the language, but nevertheless chose to act by obtaining them work visas to British India by providing financial guarantees instead of just watching the violence against Jews unleashed by the Nazis. This is one of the undocumented parts of World War II, which this family memoir reveals.
The author recently found out about his grandfather saving Jewish families in Austria during a conversation with his elder aunt. He was skeptical but curious as his aunt showed some old photos of people he initially thought were British but whose names didn’t sound British to him. Then his research began and culminated into this memoir.
The book begins with how his grandfather wanted to go to college as he wanted to elevate their family in Ludhiana. Even as a student, he was enterprising while studying at Lahore. On his return home to Ludhiana, Kundanlal became a serial entrepreneur and chose to solve problems. After college, he became a provincial civil service officer as the British slyly conducted the Imperial Civil Service (ICS) exam only in London, knowing Indians couldn’t afford to travel there. During partition, Kundanlal’s house was open to refugees from Pakistan. Realising the need for the refugees to be educated, he set up a vocational training institute. Another realisation was girls’ education, starting with his daughters, which resulted in setting up one of the oldest school in Punjab today with over 900 students.
While the pace of the narrative changes from slow to extremely fast, the writing is insightful. Memoirs are hard to write, especially if you are not a writer, as they have to be factual. This being a family memoir is tougher, as some family members may object. However, Gupta does complete justice to it. It makes the reader wonder why the British Empire didn’t choose to save the Jews before the Holocaust. It would have been so easy to settle them in different parts of their empire instead of letting the Holocaust happen. While this is not just the memoir of the Kundanlal family, it is also a memoir of the Austrian Jewish families who Kundanlal helped escape, and now their descendants live in different parts of the world. The book not only inspires but also documents the story of one of history’s hidden heroes.
A Rescue in Vienna: The story of an Unlikely Saviour
By: Vinay Gupta
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Pages: 216
Price: `599