Rudolf Olden

Rudolf Olden (14 January 1885 in Stettin – 18 September 1940) was a German lawyer and one of the first to alert the world to the treatment of Jews by the Nazis in 1934. He is the author of Hitler der Eroberer. Entlarvung einer Legende ("Hitler the Conqueror, Debunking of a Myth") which is considered part of the German exile literature. The book was promptly banned by the Nazis. Shortly after its publication by Querido in Amsterdam, Olden's citizenship was revoked and he emigrated, together with his wife, first to the United Kingdom and then, in 1940, to the United States. On 18 September both died in the U-boat attack on the SS City of Benares in the Atlantic.

In 1936 his German citizenship was revoked while Olden continued his work as secretary of the P.E.N. in London and lobbied the Nobel Committee on behalf of Carl von Ossietzky, whom the Nazis had incarcerated. In 1939, at the outbreak of war, Olden was interned and fell ill. In this period he accepted an invitation to lecture at the New School of Social Research in New York City. Earlier the couple had sent their daughter Mary Elizabeth on a child transport to Canada.

On boarding the SS City of Benares, his passport was stamped with the ominous words "No Return". On 18 September 1940, while part of a convoy, the City of Benares was torpedoed by the German submarine U-48. As a result, 258 people died, including all but 19 of 100 British children being evacuated to Canada. Rudolf Olden died, with Ika Halpern whom he had married in London, at the age of 55, she was 35. A witness recalled she had resisted persuasion from fellow passenger-victim, Colonel James Baldwin-Webb, to board a lifeboat, in order to remain with her unwell husband. In the end, her friend, Professor John Percival Day (he survived) managed to persuade her to enter the lifeboat (Boat No. 6), but she died when the boat was being lowered and it tipped, sending her plunging into the sea. Nazi German propaganda later claimed Olden and Baldwin-Webb were sailing on a mission to persuade the then-neutral United States to enter the war.

Legacy A memorial to Olden was erected at Balliol College, Oxford, on the east wall of the Chapel passage. In 1948 University College London acquired Olden's book collection and archive, which includes around 1000 books on German political and economic history.