Leitz

Reading Roger Grenier's A Box of Photographs (2013) [2010], I discover that `Ernst Leitz, the head of the Leica firm, was working to save Jewish lives. He hired Jews and then sent them, equipped with Leicas, on business trips to the United States. The New York branch took care of them. Ernst Leitz started doing this as soon as the Nazis - the people he called “the brown monkeys” - came to power. But he had to stop his rescue work when war was declared and the borders closed. The explanation for his behaviour is very simple: he hated to see people suffer.’