Beatrice Wellington

The accession to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany in 1933 began the flight of refugees, mostly communists, Social Democrats, and Jews to Czechoslovakia. The flow of refugees increased after the Munich Agreement, which ceded to Germany the region of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland; Kristalnacht, the anti-Jewish riots in Germany on 9–10 November 1938, stimulated the flight of Jewish refugees.^[5][6] In November 1938, the number of registered refugees in Czechoslovakia was 92,000. An additional 150,000, mostly Jews, were unregistered, fearing that registering and identification would make them targets in a country increasingly under Nazi control.^[7]

To see for herself the nature of the growing conflicts in Europe in the mid-1930s, Wellington took a year's leave of absence from teaching and went to Geneva, Switzerland, though the details of her employment remain obscure. A 1938 report from a Vancouver newspaper said that she "was appointed to take charge of a YWCA summer camp in Czechoslovakia.^[8]

Arriving in Prague during the fall of 1938, Wellington procured false documents, visas, and forged exit permits which allowed refugee and endangered Czech families to leave the country. How she accomplished this is unclear and less widely known. Compare with the efforts of Nicholas Winton, who was the last living member of the group and whose anti-Nazi activities have been the focus of several documentaries and films (e.g., One Life from 2023). Wellington was, however, also intricately connected with the Czech Refugee Institute which was involved with Jewish emigration. For example, on 25 December 1938, she told a Unitarian minister, H. J. McLachlan, that the Institute had just arranged for 149 Czech refugees to emigrate to Paraguay. On 21 January 1939, she is recorded as having attended a meeting of the British Committee on Refugees from Czechoslovakia (BCRC).^[9][10]

On 14 April, the Germans raided the hostel where Wellington was living and interrogated her that day and the following day for six hours, accusing her of illegal activities. The raid caused the BCRC to encourage humanitarian workers to leave Czechoslovakia but Wellington refused to leave. On 24 April, the head of BCRC, Doreen Warriner, left the country after being informed that she was on a Gestapo list to be arrested. Wellington became the leader of the BCRC, an umbrella organization that coordinated and collaborated with many humanitarian organizations in Czechoslovakia.^[11]

Wellington's task was to obtain exit documents from the German occupiers for individuals and families whose names were given to her by the Quakers, Unitarians, and other organizations dealing with the refugees. Wellington was nothing if not aggressive. Nearly every day she was in the office of Gestapo officer Karl Bömelburg requesting, and usually receiving, exit permits for 500 women and children she had identified as most vulnerable to political oppression. As she stayed in Prague after the departure of her British colleagues, she was under severe mental strain. She battled also with the BCRC in London, rejecting several attempts to recall her to Britain. She finally left Prague on 3 August 1939 and journeyed to London.^[12][13]

On her return to Britain, Wellington worked for the Czechoslovak Refugee Trust Fund (the government-controlled successor to the BCRC), inciting both "admiration and annoyance". One of her jobs was correcting fraudulent names and information she had created to secure exit visas for refugees. She worked for the United Nations in Poland after the war, but returned to Britain and hence Canada in 1948 after catching typhoid. Her fragile health was complicated by diabetes. She spent some time as a patient in a mental hospital before again becoming a school teacher. In 1971 while teaching in Edmonton she cut her foot. The wound became septic and she died on 7 April 1971.^[14]

After her death, her family endowed the Beatrice Wellington Gonzales Memorial Scholarship at the University of British Columbia and cited her "strenuous and successful efforts to protect and salvage the lives of political refugees in Europe before and during World War II. In making this award, special consideration will be given to students who like Miss Gonzales are concerned about the plight of individuals."^[15]