Rudi Hockenheimer was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1925. It seemed a safe time to his middle-class Jewish parents— Germany was recovering from the devastation of World War I which had ended seven years before—and they were pleased to have a son only a year and a half after the birth of their first baby, a girl named Marianne. But the quiet safety was deceptive.
Hitler, who had recently published Mein Kampf, was beginning to establish his leadership in the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party and the early 1930s in Germany were increasingly difficult, especially for Jews. By the summer of 1934, the Hockenheimer family was planning to emigrate. Because of business connections, Rudi’s father decided on France. In September 1935, they were granted the needed French residence permit and moved to Marseille.
Rudi and Marianne, now ten and almost twelve years old, were sent to private language schools to learn French. The first two years in Marseille were a haze of learning French, going to regular school, making new friends, and getting acclimated to the French culture. Rudi was a good student at the French Lycee and soon spoke excellent French, but he also enjoyed playing soccer and going on Boy Scout camping trips.
When France declared war on Germany in September 1939 after the invasion of Poland, the fairly simple life Rudi had been enjoying became more difficult. His father was interned by the French government at Les Milles, a camp near Marseille, as were all German and Austrian men over the age of eighteen. His mother became preoccupied with putting food on the table and trying to keep a semi-normal life for the children. Mr. Hockenheimer was released from Les Milles in December through the vouching of French friends. On May 20, 1940, German tanks barreled across Belgium and Holland and into France. Paris fell on June 14, but the Nazi forces did not slow down as they headed south and west into the heart of France.
In his autobiography, Freedom Is Not Free, Rudi vividly remembers the chaos as refugees from northern France flooded south. The German invasion of France made French authorities nervous for the safety of those German and Austrian refugees who, like Rudi’s father, had been released from Les Milles. These men were returned to the camp, this time to protect them from the advancing the Nazis. In mid-June 1940, the French authorities put most of these internees, including Mr. Hockenheimer, on a freight train, later known as The Phantom Train, which headed across Southwestern France. The goal was to get the men to North Africa to keep them out of reach of the Nazis. The wives and children of the internee men were ordered to the train station to travel in the same direction. In the middle of a stormy night, Rudi, now fourteen, found himself huddled with his mother, his sister, and hundreds of other women and children, on an overcrowded passenger train headed west. They had no idea of their actual destination.
Three days later, the train loaded with German and Austrian women and children ground to a halt in Lourdes, in the Pyrenees. By unbelievable chance, the train with the men was also stopped at the same station allowing a brief but ecstatic reunion for many families including Rudi’s. Meanwhile, Marshal Petain, now the leader of France, had signed an armistice with Nazi Germany. Because of this new situation, the women’s train was sent back to Marseille, while the men’s train was sent to yet another internment camp in Nimes, not far away. The Hockenheimer family, still separated, was now in the so-called “free zone,” Vichy France, a puppet government closely monitored by the Nazis. In August, Rudi, Marianne, and their mother were confined to a room in the hastily set up holding station in the Hotel Bompard. The hotel was controlled by the French Police and special passes were needed to leave. The Hockenheimers had no income and no idea of what the future would bring.
When school started in September, Rudi learned he would be barred from his French high school for being German. Marianne, being a girl, was allowed to remain in school. In his autobiography, Rudi says, “My expulsion from Lycée St. Charles ultimately helped save the lives of my immediate family and could be regarded as an act of fate.” (p. 49, Freedom Is Not Free.)
In 1940, Marseille was the only city in Vichy France that had foreign consulates. Several social relief agencies, including the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers) were also located in the city. Because the United States was not yet involved in the war, the Americans held the enviable position of being classed as neutral. Mrs. Hockenheimer went to the American Friends, among others, for help. Rudi accompanied his mother on her visits to the agencies as she tried to free her husband from the internment camp, now at Gurs, in the Pyrenees, and find a way for the family to flee France. On an early visit to the American Friends, his mother offered Rudi, who spoke fluent French and German, and adequate English, as a volunteer office boy and interpreter —an offer that the Quakers were happy to accept.
Rudi’s duties included helping in the reception office, talking to refugees, helping the director’s wife in her work with refugee children, and, most importantly, visiting the US Consulate several times a week to research documents for the Quakers. Occasionally during these visits, he was able to look into the files of his own family and determine if any additional documentation or specific action might help their cause. The Vichy government did not prevent refugees from leaving France if they could get immigration visas to another country. However, doing so was up to each individual or family, so Rudi’s ability to keep track of their applications with the US visa office was very fortuitous.
It was largely because of Rudi’s connections at the US Consulate and with the Quakers that his family was finally able to flee France just in time. The US Vice Consul, Hiram Bingham, was instrumental in issuing a visa to the Hockenheimers, against state department instructions. Bingham saved 2,500 Jewish lives in this fashion. His heroic his acts went unrecognized until 2006 when a commemorative stamp was printed and he was recognized in Washington, DC by Colin Powell, then Secretary of State.
On May 6, 1941, Rudi and his family said good-bye to their French and Quaker friends, boarded the Vichy French ship, S.S. Winnipeg, and settled into the four tier bunks of the tourist class section for their voyage across the Atlantic headed for Martinique in the Caribbean. A day out from Martinique, their ship was captured by the Royal Dutch Navy, working for the British, and taken to Trinidad instead. After a confinement of close to four weeks in Trinidad, they finally arrived in New York City aboard the S.S. Uruguay on June 30, 1941
Rudi, who later changed his name to Ralph Hockley, was drafted into the United States Army in December 1943 and ordered to Camp Ritchie in October 1944. He returned to France near the end of the war, at the age of nineteen, as an American GI working in counterintelligence. After the war ended, he attended college at Syracuse University and then returned to the military for active duty in Korea. He had a twenty-five year career in the military and in civilian intelligence in Germany. He rose to the rank of colonel, military intelligence. He is still known as Rudi to his close friends and family.
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