Another passenger was Wilfrid Israel , a member of an important Anglo-German Jewish family and a rescuer of Jews from the Holocaust who had close connections to the British government . He was born in England to an Anglo-Jewish mother and German Jewish father , and he and his brother had run the Nathan Israel Department Store in Berlin until it was seized by the Nazis in 1938 . As early as 1933 , he was obtaining information about Nazi arrest lists and warning the intended victims . He worked with consular officials in the British embassy to obtain visas , and he dismissed 700 of his firm 's Jewish staff with two years ' pay in 1936 , telling them to save themselves by leaving Germany . After Kristallnacht , he was instrumental in setting up the Kindertransport which saved more than 10,000 Jewish children from Germany and Austria . He remained in Berlin until 1939 when he left for Britain . He returned to Berlin once more before the outbreak of war to secure the departure of a last trainload of children . On 26 March 1943 , he left Britain for Portugal and spent two months investigating the situation of Jews in Spain and Portugal ; he found as many as 1,500 Jewish refugees in Spain , many of whom he aided in obtaining Palestine certificates , and he proposed a plan to the British government to aid them
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
BOAC Flight 777