Solomon Schonfeld

[2] In Nitra he became the student and lifelong friend of Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl, who acted as his inspiration in his rescue work.

In 1933 he became the rabbi of the Adath Yisroel Synagogue in North London, and succeeded his father as principal of the fledgling Jewish Secondary School.

[5] In the autumn of 1938, following Kristallnacht, Julius Steinfeld, a communal leader in Austria, called Rabbi Schonfeld, pleading with him to assemble a children's transport to England for Vienna's Orthodox Jewish youth.

Rabbi Schonfeld met with Yaakov Rosenheim and Harry Goodman, president and secretary of World Agudath Israel respectively, but even before they could decide on a strategy, he boarded a train to Vienna.

Rabbi Schonfeld helped Steinfeld organize a Kindertransport of close to 300 Orthodox Jewish youngsters, providing the British government with his personal guarantee in order to secure their entry.

Within ten days, two Archbishops, eight Peers, four Bishops, the Episcopate of England and Wales and 48 members of all parties signed the notice of meeting to consider the Motion.

In January 1943 Schonfeld worked with Eleanor Rathbone to devise a practical rescue plan, but they then encountered Zionist opposition.

[6] Schonfeld considered as another failure his unsuccessful request to the British government to heed Rabbi Weissmandl's plea to bomb the railway tracks to Auschwitz and possibly the crematoria.

In 1946, after the Allied victory, he went with a convey of lorries to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps to help survivors move to fledgling communities.