How An Indian Businessman Outsmarted The Nazis, Rescued 5 Jewish Families

Long before the world came to know the story of Schindler's List, a businessman from Punjab was risking everything to quietly rescue Jewish families from the grip of Nazi persecution. His name was Kundan Lal, and for decades, his story remained hidden, even from his own family.

It was a single sentence that changed everything for his grandson, Vinay Gupta. "Let me tell you a secret. Your nana (grandfather) helped Jewish families escape the Nazis."

His grandfather, Kundan Lal? The same man who ran a matchstick factory, raised five kids, and rarely spoke of anything beyond business or family? It didn't seem possible.

But it was true. And it would take Gupta years, stacks of letters, survivor testimonies, and a journey across continents to uncover it. What he found became his book, 'A Rescue in Vienna', a memoir of one man's silent defiance of Hitler.

A Meeting That Changed Lives

In 1938, as Adolf Hitler's forces marched into Austria, Jewish families were hurled into chaos. One such family was that of Alfred and Lucy Wachsler, a young couple expecting their first child.

At the same time, Kundan Lal, then 45, had travelled to Vienna from India seeking medical treatment for diabetes and haemorrhoids. During his recovery in a hospital, he met the Wachsler couple, and from them, he learned about the spiralling anti-Semitic violence consuming Austria.

A successful machine tools manufacturer from Ludhiana, Kundan Lal could have walked away. But instead, he offered what he could: a job, a visa, a way out.

He didn't stop there. He went on to save a total of 14 Jewish lives from the Nazis.

Austria To India

Kundan Lal returned to Ludhiana, a dusty industrial city in Punjab, with something more urgent than factory blueprints. He had promises to keep.

One by one, he arranged job offers for Jewish professionals, sometimes for businesses that didn't even exist.

He placed a job advertisement in a local Austrian newspaper, seeking skilled workers in woodworking and textiles who would be willing to relocate to India.

The responses began to come in.

Between early 1938 and 1939, Kundanlal quietly rescued five Jewish families from Nazi-occupied Austria.

Fritz Weiss, a lawyer hiding in a hospital, was offered a fictional job at "Kundan Agencies." Hans Losch, a textile expert, responded to a newspaper ad and signed on as manager of the imaginary "Kundan Cloth Mills."

Alfred and Lucy Wachsler, the young couple from the hospital, arrived with their infant son. Alfred and Siegfried Schafranek, brothers who had once run a plywood factory in Austria, came to build a new one in Punjab.

Siegmund Retter, a machine tools trader, got help to flee before the Nazis fully seized his world.

When Hans Losch met Kundan Lal, he was desperate. Recently fired because of anti-Jewish laws, divorced, and watching his father's business get looted in Czechoslovakia, he didn't even ask what Ludhiana was like. He just needed out.

Kundan Lal offered him a job, housing, and 25 per cent of the profits, on paper. He even signed a guarantee to help secure the visa.

"Really!" Losch gasped. "You would be willing to do that for me?"

"Of course," Kundan Lal said. "You and others, if possible." (This excerpt is taken from Vinay Gupta's 'A Rescue in Vienna'.)

It worked. Only weeks later, Losch boarded a steamship to Bombay and a train to Ludhiana.

The Life They Found In India

Not all who arrived stayed. Ludhiana wasn't Vienna. It was hot, isolated, unfamiliar. There was no Jewish community, no theatre, no familiar food.

Losch left within weeks for Bombay. Weiss left even sooner. Both moved on, restarted careers, and eventually left India behind. Kundan Lal never resented them.

"My aunt told me he actually felt embarrassed," Gupta writes, "that he could not provide a lifestyle and social environment more suited to Vienna."

Others stayed longer. The Wachsler family moved into a home Kundan Lal built, next to one meant for the Schafraneks. Alfred Wachsler started a furniture workshop, using Burmese teak and local artisans. Some of that furniture survives to this day.

The Schafraneks arrived in 1939 and launched one of India's first plywood factories in a shed behind their new home.

War Comes To India

Even India couldn't stay untouched by the war. In September 1939, war broke out. Hitler invaded Poland. Britain, and by extension, colonial India, was at war with Germany.

The war ended in 1945.

The Wachsler family left for Karachi in 1942 and resettled in the US by 1948.

Kundan Lal's Death

In Ludhiana, Kundan Lal kept building. He started a school for his daughters that still runs today with over 900 students. Life wasn't kind.

His wife, Saraswati, fell into depression. She died in 1965 after a fall from their terrace. Kundan Lal followed a year later, aged 73.

He never told the story.

Years later, Gupta tracked down Alex Wachsler, Alfred's son. Alex had lived in the US since the age of 10, but still spoke Urdu, still visited Indian restaurants, still called India home. One of the desks his father built, the same Burmese teak desk Kundan Lal once used, still sits in Gupta's office.