The Leica Freedom Train

From 1933, as the National Socialist government tightened its grip on Germany, Ernst Leitz II — head of the Ernst Leitz optical company in Wetzlar — began a clandestine effort to help Jewish members of his staff emigrate. Using the company's international sales network as cover, he arranged for employees and their families to be transferred to Leitz offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong, and the United States. Each person was given a Leica camera to carry, both as a professional tool and as a plausible reason for travel.

The scale of the effort is difficult to document precisely because Leitz kept no records that could endanger those involved. Research credits Leitz with providing decisive help to roughly 86 people between 1933 and 1945, with the effort intensifying after Kristallnacht in 1938 until the war made emigration impossible. The operation became known after the war as the "Leica Freedom Train," a phrase coined decades later by journalist Frank Dabba Smith.

This chapter of company history is sober and important. Leitz took personal and business risks at a time when many German industrialists chose compliance. The story was little known outside Leica collecting circles until the early 2000s, when researchers and the Wetzlar Jewish community began to document it more formally.