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Erna Hollitscher

In May 1938 the BFUW established an ad hoc committee to administer refugee assistance. Erna Hollitscher, a graduate from the University of Vienna, was placed in charge of the new committee. Hollitscher, who had escaped Vienna that year, quickly became the heart and soul of the BFUW’s London-based relief operation, corresponding with more five hundred colleagues from across Europe seeking assistance.

The annexation of Austria in March 1938 exacerbated the refugee crisis and the calls for assistance increased exponentially as IFUW members in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland joined their German counterparts in desperately seeking help to escape Nazi tyranny. Up until this point, the BFUW’s Executive Committee had dealt with refugee matters as part of its overall business, but the numerical increase called for a change of strategy. Their response was to establish an Emergency Sub-Committee for Refugees (ESCR), which, in May 1938, took over responsibility for dealing with all refugee-related issues. As the workload increased, the ESCR members realised that they needed support, and decided to appoint a secretary for 13 weeks – long enough, they assessed, for the backlog to be cleared. The person chosen was Dr Erna Hollitscher, a 41-year-old language graduate from Vienna, who had come to Britain following the annexation of Austria in March 1938. She, like so many Jewish women forced to migrate, had initially worked as an au pair before contacting the BFUW and receiving its help. Holly, as she became known, stayed in post rather longer than anticipated, and was still with the BFUW after the refugee committee disbanded in 1950.

In September 1938 the committee appointed Dr Erna Hollitscher as secretary. ‘Holly’, born in Vienna, was a language graduate of Vienna University who, unable to find work in her field, had taken secretarial work. A Jewess, she fled from Austria in March 1938 and worked as an au pair in England before contacting BFUW. Sybil Campbell gave her hospitality and friendship. It was appropriate to have a refugee for the post of secretary, someone who had experienced forced migration and who had excellent translation and secretarial skills. It was also important that she was Jewish which gave her an empathy that only a fellow refugee could have with the increasing numbers of Jewish refugee women seeking help. Holly was secretary for the 11 years of the committee’s existence and worked for BFUW for 19 years. She dealt with an enormous amount of work, was extremely efficient and took a personal interest in almost every case. In the first 7 months of her employment a total of 1450 letters were written, interviews took place on and off all day, the telephone rang constantly, the committee was serviced. She linked job vacancies with suitable applicants and used her own contacts to find employment or hospitality. She visited refugees in hospital. She networked with other refugee agencies especially with the Society of Friends.

In her chapter on the British Federation of University Women, Susan Cohen adds that professional bodies such as the British Medical Association expressed disquiet at the threat to their membership posed by Jewish doctors and dentists. Here too the momentum of refugee relief owed much to the efforts of women such as Esther Simpson (secretary to the SPSL) and Erna Hollitscher, herself a refugee from Vienna.