This is from the utterly charming memoirs of Hans Straus, my grandfather's good friend in pre war Tokyo, and the father of my father's closest childhood friend Ulrich, who also happens to be my godfather, and a very interesting chap in his own right. (I'll post a short bio after his father's recollection)
Hans Straus writes:
There was a Jewish dentist in Tokyo by the name of Silberstein. It was in fall of 1939 when he told us that before he came to Japan he had become engaged to a Polish-Jewish lady who had fled to the Soviet Union when the Germans overran Poland. The Russians put her into a concentration camp in Siberia. Could we do anything to get her out of the camp and bring her to Japan?
Baerwald knew the Japanese Ambassador to Moscow (and later Foreign Minister in the Tojo cabinet) Fumihiko Togo who had a German wife. Baerwald wrote to Togo who succeeded to get Miss Sonia out of the Siberian camp. She was allowed to leave the Soviet Union – a rare occurrence. The first word we had from her was a telegram from Harbin in Manchuria and three days later she arrived in Tokyo. We expected her to be a half-starved, ill dressed woman, the way all refugees from Eastern Poland looked. But she was exceedingly well dressed, by any standard, she was well fed and in excellent spirits. Moreover she was a very attractive woman. She could not marry her fiancé immediately since some papers were lacking. Thus we quartered her with a Japanese musician couple, pupils of our pianist-friend Leonid Kreutzer and close friends of the Konoye family. Viscount Konoye was the leading conductor in Japan, his brother Prince Konoye was the Prime Minister.
A few weeks after Miss Sonia’s arrival, I ran into my old friend Karl Rosenberg who was very susceptible to feminine charms. Several times we had some minor scandals in connection with our friend’s love-life. That time Rosenberg was raving about Miss Sonia. With glowing eyes he told me what a wonderful woman she was and how often he had met her. And then he said: “But now I have to tell you something which is really phantastic: “The Russians did not release her unless she promised to work for them as an undercover agent in Japan” I was flabbergasted. The Jewish community lived a very precarious life. The Nazis tried their best to convince the Japanese that we were just a bunch of communists and should be turned over to the kempetai – the military police, for questioning. We all knew that “questioning” meant torture. Only recently Mr. Cox, the Reuter correspondent had jumped to his death – or been thrown – out of the window at police headquarters. And now the Jewish Committee had put a Soviet spy into the home of a Japanese family closely connected with the Prime Minister’s family! Rosenberg confided in me that on the coming Tuesday he was to go to the back of the Maruzen book store. There in the archeological section he was to meet a man to whom after an exchange of passwords he was to hand a report of Miss Sonia. I implored Rosenberg not to do it under any circumstances, but he was adamant, he insisted to do the beautiful lady a favor.
In desperation I rushed home to get together with Steinfeld and Baerwald but they were both at a summer resort four hours away. I took the next train and at nine o’clock in the evening I met my friends. Baerwald just listened and then just said that he was taking the next train to Tokyo. Only later did we learn that that very night at three thirty in the morning he had the Prime Minister woken up, dragged out of bed and told him the whole story – thus saving our group from disaster. I took it upon myself to meet with Miss Sonia and tried to convince her that while being honest with the Japanese police she should also withstand the expected attempts of the police to now enroll her as a Japanese counter-intelligence agent. When we sailed for the United States on October 31, 1940 a stranger pressed an envelope into my hand. It was an exciting letter from our friend K: The police had minded my attempts to influence Miss Sonia, only by the skin of our teeth did we escape torture or death.
