EclectEcon

During the 1930s and 40s the son of the founder of the Leica camera company, Ernst Leitz II, a Protestant, and his daughter Dr. Elsie Kuehn-Leitz smuggled hundreds of Jews out of Germany before the Holocaust.

The story has only recently been told in detail, as the Leitz family members involved did not want the details made public during their lifetime. ...

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "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 the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany.

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.