NEWS RELEASE
ORILLIA MUSEUM OF ART AND HISTORY
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“Lock the front doors, please, we’re at capacity,” said Dorothy Macdonald, chair of the History Committee at the Orillia Museum of Art & History last Wednesday evening.
The speaker's room at the museum was full like never before to hear Evelyn Ross, a long-time resident of Orillia and former co-owner of Manticore Books, relate the narrative of her parents' “Escape from Nazi Europe, 1943” to a riveted crowd.
Evelyn's mother had kept a diary during their dangerous wartime flight from Holland to Portugal. Evelyn also exhibited photos, false passports, visas and prison artefacts from their journey.
The escape began in Vienna shortly after the German Anschluss of March 12, 1938. Evelyn’s father Eugene fled to The Hague in Holland where he met her mother, Lutina. Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. He was eventually tracked down and ordered to report to the German army.
With the help of the underground in the Netherlands, Belgium and France they escaped south of Paris into “Free France,” enduring many stressful close calls.
Hours after arriving in Vichy, France by foot across the demarcation line, they were arrested for entering illegally. Identification papers and money were confiscated. Being Austrian, Eugene was considered a German citizen by both Axis and Allies, which made travelling with false Belgian papers extremely risky.
They were sent to Vichy, and then Lyon where hopefully the Dutch office would help. Eventually the American Consul gave Eugene new Belgian papers as a non-belligerent. Two months later he received “Safe Conduct” papers for Perpignan, near the Spanish border.
Before they could leave however, the Securité came to their Lyon flat to check papers. Luti’s premonitions led them to the safety of a friend’s flat the very night the police returned to arrest Eugene. He then insisted that Luti go to Lisbon by herself.
Sheer luck also prevented Gene from recapture by mountain border patrol while the underground led him through the Pyrenees. He was however hauled off the Madrid train and interned for months in a Spanish labour camp near Pamplona.
On his release, he joined Luti, who now worked at the Dutch Legation in Lisbon. Here they could get married, and obtain visas for passage to Philadelphia on the now-famous Serpa Pinto refugee ship.
Incredibly though, it was stopped mid-Atlantic by a German U-boat, whose Captain demanded they surrender two men or he would sink their ship. Until the impasse was resolved, passengers floated on the open ocean in lifeboats through the night, with Luti eight months pregnant.
Finally, the couple made their way from Philadelphia to Montreal, and then to Toronto, where they were overwhelmed and grateful for the generous welcome. Only in 2014 did Evelyn discover the sinister intent behind the standoff with the Serpa Pinto. So went the inaugural History talk for 2019.
To ensure hearing the next speaker, who is Ann Harrison on the Underground Railroad for Feb. 20 at 7:30 p.m., you best arrive early!
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