Folklorist's secret wartime mission

Hamish Henderson, famous folk song archivist

By Mike Lloyd For BBC News Online

The work of poet and folk song collector Hamish Henderson is being celebrated with a four day musical event, 'The Carrying Stream', 8 - 11 November in Edinburgh.

Henderson was revered for his humanity and generosity of spirit and Mike Lloyd recalls a little-known episode in his eventful life, which helps to explain why.

Hamish Henderson was a modest man, who spoke seldom about his humanitarian work before the Second World War.

But, in an interview for BBC Radio Scotland a couple of years before his death, Hamish told the story of his secret work for the Quakers, helping to smuggle Jewish children out of Nazi Germany.

Dangerous mission

He was recruited when organizers of the Quaker mercy mission heard him speak against fascism at the Cambridge Union.

Escape by train was dangerous

"I can't say I was very enthusiastic, when I heard it was clandestine," Hamish recalled.

Still, he spent the last summer before the war in Gottingen placed with a Jewish family, "a sort of double-bluff," and his job was to deliver messages linking the evacuees with their rescuers.

"I never read the messages," he said, "in case the Germans rumbled me and beat me up. I thought I would spill the beans if I knew what was in them."

Hamish did attract the attention of the Nazi authorities and went to great lengths to shake off a German 'tail'. "He looked like a poor man's Dr Goebbels I remember and he followed me everywhere."

That included blatant eavesdropping on a beerhall chat with the Jewish doctor who was putting him up. "We talked about folksong, naturally," Henderson laughed.

The gathering storm

As war loomed closer, it was time to get out. The Nazi's pasted the announcement of their non-aggression pact with the Russians on the wall opposite his bedroom window.

The Jewish family were desperate to get their own son out and asked Hamish to take little Karlheinz with him. At great risk, Henderson agreed.

Gottingen as it looks today

At the station he had one last letter to post. Hamish shook off his tail by leading him on a wild goose chase through the streets.

"I used to win marathons, I just outran him. In fact when I realised I had lost him I was so far away from the railway station I had to ask my way back."

Re-united with KarlHeinz, they set out together for Holland and freedom.

It was a tense journey and, as the train slowed to a stop on the wrong side of the border, an elderly Dutchman noticed their anxiety.

"To take our minds off things he taught us the Wilhelmus, the Dutch national anthem," Hamish said.

Slowly the train lurched forwards, and came safe at last to Holland. Hamish stood with the old man and Karlheinz, on the station platform, singing the Wilhelmus at the tops of their voices, "tears streaming down our cheeks".