Hiding his Jewish identity during World War II, the Polish-born Wilhelm Bachner posed as a German.
Bachner didn’t just save himself. He also saved more than 50 other Jews, according to Samuel Oliner, co-author with Kathleen Lee of “Who Shall Live: The Wilhelm Bachner Story.”
The title is taken from the Yom Kippur liturgy.
The story of Bachner, a rescuer who later immigrated to the East Bay, inspired Oliner, who is himself a rescued Jew.
“It helps me to dispel the myth of Jewish passivity, that Jews went like sheep to the slaughter,” said Oliner, a resident of Arcata, where he is a professor at Humboldt State University. “The history books ought not leave out Jewish heroism. It distorts the image of Jews as sheep or non-fighters.”
In addition to those Jews in the Resistance movement, he added, “there were Jews rescuing lives in other ways. Someone would establish a little town, a camp in the woods and bring in people from the ghettos and save their lives.”
During the war, Bachner, who spoke perfect German and Polish, talked his way into a job with a German engineering firm, repairing bombed-out airfields, bridges and railroad tracks. He secretly hired Jews to work for him, including family members who were living in the Warsaw Ghetto. In “Who Shall Live,” Oliner and Lee describe Bachner’s anxiety on his way to interview for the job.
“He worried a little, as he walked down the street, that the casual glances he exchanged with passersby might somehow reveal that he was Jewish. Could they tell? If he looked furtive, it might make him more suspicious. He tried to remember what it was like to walk down a street and not think about being a Jew.” Ironically, his prospective employer did not look Aryan at all.
Bachner “was a bicultural person,” Oliner said in an interview. “He was forceful. He had a kind of Germanic quality because he was brought up in a German environment. That’s something that served as a wonderful cover for the Nazis because he worked for the German railroad. The Germans respected his confidence. He could bluff easily his way in the German bureaucracy. He had this chutzpah, this kind of courage and valor, and this kind of coolness. He wouldn’t panic.”
Bachner’s brother-in-law Herbert Ballhorn, a Moraga resident who aided Oliner with the book, said that Bachner “liked order and an ordered life. He hated uncertainty or half-work. In many ways he out-Germaned the Germans.”
Bachner had the good fortune to fall into the good graces of an oberleutnant (first lieutenant), Hans Gregor, when the firm he was working for subcontracted for a German construction firm doing defense work.
The book describes their tense first meeting.
“The oberleutnant turned to Bachner and said, ‘Tell me, Herr Engineer, where did you study that you learned both perfect German and Polish?’
“Bachner was forced to make one of those calculations as to whether he should lie or tell the truth, one of the hundreds that someone who was ‘passing’ was forced to make in a split second, weighing the potential consequences without looking as if he were hesitating. He decided to go with the truth.
“‘I received my degree from the Deutsche Technische Hochschule in Brno.’
“‘Mensch!’ exclaimed Gregor in delight.”
Gregor had gone to the same school.
When the German government surrendered in 1945, Bachner was almost shot by American military police. He was mistaken for a Nazi accomplice.
To escape both Polish communism and anti-Semitism, Bachner immigrated to the United States in the ’50s and settled in the Bay Area, remaining here until his death in early 1991. A resident of Oakland and then Moraga, he was a member of Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland and Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek. He was also president of B’nai Brith’s Oakland lodge.
Ballhorn and his wife, Bachner’s sister Hilde, remember Bachner as both compassionate and courageous. Reunited with her brother after the war, she cried when she heard about his altruism. “It was a very, very touching time.”
Both Ballhorns were instrumental in helping Oliner with the book. Initially, Oliner was interested in Bachner as a rescued Jew. When he first contacted Bachner in the early ’80s while gathering information on rescued Jews like himself, “I discovered to my amazement, on the contrary, he was a rescuer,” he said.
During the war, Oliner’s family lived in Bobowa, a ghetto in southern Poland. In August 1942, the Nazis forced the Jews into the town plaza. Oliner’s stepmother told the 12-year-old Oliner to run and hide. Escaping under a fence, he wandered to the village of Bystra where his grandfather lived. A friend of his grandfather’s sheltered him in her attic. He discovered later that his family had been taken to a nearby forest and shot.
Oliner, who is project director for the Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt State, has had a lifelong interest in altruistic people like Bachner and has written several books on the subject.
Bachner’s altruism continued long after the war, his brother-in- law said. Bachner volunteered his time writing letters in German for Shoah survivors attempting to get restitution claims.
He kept a slab of marble by his bed with a saying that summed up his philosophy.
“I shall pass this way but once. Any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.”