One Thousand Children

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ONE THOUSAND CHILDREN A term that refers to those Jewish children who fled Nazi Germany and other parts of Europe to avoid the Hitler peril, in number about 1400 as actually identified (see below) who: a) came from Europe mostly directly to the United States, without first reaching the United Kingdom (see below); b) who arrived in the USA anytime between November 1934 and May 1945; c) came without their parents or any adult relatives - i.e. Unaccompanied. This is their most important defining characteristic; d) were then placed in a variety of "foster" situations - individual as-if foster-homes with host families, with true relatives, in group homes, or even orphanages (many children moved between several such placements); e) for this purpose, the upper cut-off age is considered to be sixteen or below.

The term also refers to the non-profit One Thousand Children Organization whose primary purpose is to further awareness of this story. Many details about the One Thousand Children can be found at the Organization WWW site http://WWW.OneThousandChildren.org . Much more well-known is the story of the Kindertransport (qv). That effort brought approximately 10,000 similarly defined mainly Jewish children to the United Kingdom, during the period Nov 21, 1938 and Sept 3, 1939 (United Kingdom Declaration of War). These two stories can be compared and contrasted in many dimensions as follows: a) the mostly Jewish One Thousand Children mostly came directly to the USA; the Kindertransport came to and stayed in the United Kingdom; b) the Kindertransport came under an official program of the British Government that on Nov 21, 1938 just after Nov 9/10, 1938 (Kristallnacht), passed a law permitting an extra 10,000 such children to enter exempt from many regular "quota" arrangements. However, in the USA there was no such special exemption passed by Congress, and children had to come on the regular (and very limited quotas); They of course also had to have affidavits indicating financial sponsorship; c) in part because of (b), the sponsors and organizers of the individual and group children sailings and placements in America were much less coherently organized for the One Thousand Children than for the Kindertransport. These sponsors, such as various Jewish Organizations and synagogues, the Quakers, other refugee organizations, as well as individuals and family members, are referred to as the "rescuers."

The One Thousand Children story was first identified by Dr Judith Baumel in her 1990 book Unfilled Promise (see references). But the even more significant and active effort was made by Iris Posner in 2000, together with Leonore Moskowitz, who jointly also founded the organization The One Thousand Children. Posner and Moskowitz did much more research; they found records of the individual 1,400 children's arrival in the USA from ships manifests, etc; and then managed to locate the current addresses of about 500 still-living such children. Note that because of (c) immediately above, the records of the rescuers were much harder to track down (compared with the Kindertransport situation). Posner and Moskowitz, under the aegis of their organization The One Thousand Children also organized an International Conference in Chicago, IL in 2002, at which about 150 such children attended and there were about 40 speakers - both "children" and rescuers. The Organization's archives are in process of being transferred to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, PA. (Its WWW site is hppt://WWW.NMAHJ.ORG .) The archives will include video-recordings of the complete 2002 Conference as well as partial transcripts, also many artifacts that the children brought, including very personal and significant personal diaries written while children or later as adults.

      References: 
    * Much of the story, including individual children's memoir excerpts, can be found in the book Don't Wave Goodbye ed.  Philip K. Jason and Iris Posner (Praeger, Westport CT 2004).  
    * An early description is in Unfulfilled Promise by Judith T. Baumel (Danali Press, Juneau, AK 1990).  
    * See also http://WWW.OneThousandChildren.org .  This gives an extensive bibliography, and many WWW URL links, as well as many photographs, individual stories, etc..
    
    Kacser 19:03, 14 February 2007 (UTC) Claude Kacser, a One Thousand Child