My parents first thought about emigration in the spring of 1936. Until then, they had assumed that the Nazi regime would not be able to hold on for long. But when France and Great Britain did not react to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland in March 1936, they knew it was time to leave Germany; but the question remained, where to. There was little prospect of obtaining a residence permit. Palestine was not a serious consideration for them; not only would it have been very difficult to get started, but it was uncertain whether a so-called certificate of entry would have been issued at all. I wanted to go to Palestine at that time, but the lifestyle in the pioneer country of that time would have remained foreign to my parents. In March 1938, my father, in a rather desperate mood, took part in an information trip to the USA organized by the Israelitisches Familienblatt. While they were en route, the German invasion of Austria occurred. During his two-week stay in the USA, my father discovered a very distant relative, Harry Mela, whose name he had found in the Manhattan telephone directory. Mela’s grandfather, a brother of my father’s grandfather, had emigrated to the U.S. in 1852. Harry Mela, a successful Wall Street lawyer, belonged to New York’s elite of German Jewish origin whose ancestors had come to America around or shortly after 1848. The Melas were assimilated Jews belonging to the distinguished Reform Temple Emmanuel. Mela was willing to issue us an affidavit, the surety bond necessary for immigration. My father went back to Germany and applied for an American visa. On October 5, Yom Kippur, we received the visa, and on October 7 we left for Holland by train.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 65f (translation)