By the time Max and Fanny Valfer applied for American immigration visas in September 1938, there was a years-long waiting list. Along with hundreds of thousands of others, they found themselves caught in a trap. Escape routes from Nazi Germany were closing down at the very moment that persecution of the country’s Jewish minority was entering a new, even more vicious phase.

A prosperous cigarette distributor, Max had plenty of reasons to delay his departure from Germany. He had fought in the German army in World War I and felt at home in Kippenheim, a village on the edge of the Black Forest with a sizable Jewish population. He was proud of the business he had created from nothing, telling his children “nobody can take away what we have built up.” He and Fanny still enjoyed a comfortable middle-class lifestyle that would be jeopardized if they emigrated.

Max’s calculations changed radically during the second half of 1938 when German authorities began registering Jewish businesses and arresting Jews at random, without good cause. His six children had all either left Germany or were preparing to leave. Just two months after submitting his papers to the US consulate in Stuttgart, Max was arrested during Kristallnacht, a night of organized attacks against Jews, their businesses, and places of worship. He was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp where the trauma he experienced convinced him that there was no alternative to emigration.

For a few weeks, Max and Fanny hoped they might be able to follow their daughter Freya to Cuba. Freya and her husband had bought tickets to Havana on the St. Louis, along with a “permit to land” from a corrupt director of Cuban immigration. Those plans fell through when the St. Louis’ passengers were refused permission to disembark. Eventually the ship returned to Europe, where four European countries divided the passengers so they did not have to return to Germany. Freya and her family found refuge in England along with other Valfer children.

Any hope that Max and Fanny might be able to join their children in England while they waited for their American visas vanished after the outbreak of war in September 1939. For more than a year, it seemed there was no possibility of escape from Germany. In October 1940, the Nazis decided to “cleanse” the state of Baden of Jews. Along with their Jewish neighbors, the Valfers were given two hours to leave their homes.

“We have become beggars”

“We have become beggars,” Fanny wrote to family members from the Camp de Gurs in southwest France, following their expulsion from Germany. “I still cannot grasp that we have become so poor and helpless . . . my eyes hurt from crying.”

Deportation to Gurs, a desolate place at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains where it seemed to rain constantly, brought many trials—but also a significant opportunity, if they could only find a way to seize it. Despite the terrible camp conditions, Max and Fanny could still communicate with their children in America and Britain, seek help from Jewish relief agencies, and renew their visa applications with the American consulate in Marseille.

In May 1941, Max was transferred to the Les Milles “emigration camp” in the hills above Marseille after convincing French officials that he would soon be eligible for an American visa. Unfortunately, his transfer coincided with “Fifth column” fears, a German spy scare in the United States, which resulted in a further tightening in US immigration procedures. A months-long delay ensued as he resubmitted his papers to comply with the new regulations.

The US consulate in Marseille finally scheduled a long-awaited visa interview for Max and Fanny for December 8, 1941. If all went well, they would receive their US visas and immediately apply for transit visas via Spain and Portugal. They had tentative reservations on a ship leaving Lisbon for the United States in late December.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States, threw these plans into disarray. Even though the Nazi government had stripped the Valfers of their German citizenship, Max and Fanny were now considered “enemy aliens” by the US State Department, because they had been born in Germany. They were obliged to demonstrate that they did not pose a security threat to the United States before they could be granted visas.

Out of Time

In letters to her children, Fanny stressed the need for patience. “When I first arrived here, we expected to leave for the United States after four weeks. It did not work out that way. Now we must wait until it is our turn. In this difficult time, we have nothing to do but suffer.”

After months of frustration and disappointment, there was a breakthrough in their case at the end of July 1942. After interviewing two of the Valfer children who had already reached the US, the Interdepartmental Visa Review Committee in Washington approved the immigration applications of Max and Fanny. “I can hardly work at all from the joy,” the oldest Valfer son, Karl, wrote his parents from Chicago.

“I see you, my dears, trying to keep the tears from your cheeks. Keep your heads high. God willing, you will soon be able to set foot in this wonderful country.”

By the time Karl’s letter arrived in Marseille, it was too late. Under pressure from Nazi Germany, the French agreed to hand over 10,000 foreign Jews for “deportation to the East.” On August 12, Max and Fanny were sent by train from Les Milles to the Drancy transit camp outside Paris, and from there to Auschwitz. Their French police file bore the rubber stamp, “Immigration to the United States pending.”

The Valfers were never formally denied American visas and were victims of years of bureaucratic delays, unfortunate timing, and external events they could not control. Comparing the handling of Max and Fanny’s immigration case with the experience of their daughter Else, shows the difference timing made. By applying in early August 1938, before the sudden upsurge in visa applications, Else was able to obtain a low American waiting list “registration number.” This in turn made her eligible for asylum in Britain, which considered itself a “transit country” for German Jews who hoped to eventually immigrate to the US. Else joined her husband, sister, and older brother in England in August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of war.

By contrast, the lines outside the Stuttgart consulate had become unmanageable by the time Max and Fanny applied for visas in September 1938. They were assigned high “registration numbers” that led to years of bureaucratic limbo before they would even qualify for an interview with an American consul.

A delay of just a few weeks, even a few days, in deciding to leave Germany often had fateful consequences. In the case of Max and Fanny Valfer, it was the difference between life and death.

Learn more about Max and Fanny in The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between, co-published by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.