One Thousand Children

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One Thousand Children refers to approximately 1400 mostly Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied or threatened countries by entities and individuals within the United States of America, who specifically came unaccompanied without their parent(s).

The term also refers to the non-profit research and education organization One Thousand Children (OTC) whose primary purpose is to explore and document this little known segment of American history.

Contents 1 Rescue effort 2 Historic documentation 3 The British Kindertransport 4 External links 5 References

[edit] Rescue effort

While a generation of 1.5 million children perished in the Holocaust, over one thousand children were brought to America in quiet operations designed to avoid attention from isolationist and anti-Semitic forces. These children:

• came from Europe to the United States mainly from 1934 through 1945;
• were aged from fourteen months old through the age of sixteen;
• arrived unaccompanied, leaving their parents behind, and
• were then placed with foster families, schools and facilities across the U.S.

The first small group of children arrived in New York in November 1934. This and subsequent small groups, totaling about 100 annually in the early years of operation, were taken to foster homes arranged through appeals to congregations and organizations' members.

Some children also came under private arrangements and sponsorship, typically made by the parent(s) with a family relative or friend. Such children would live with their sponsor, or sometimes live in a boarding school in close contact with their sponsor.

Prior to 1941, only small groups were brought into the country because of social hostility to allowing foreigners to enter the U.S. during the Depression. Sponsoring organizations wanted to avoid drawing undue attention to the children, whose immigration was limited by quotas for their countries of origin.

The demand on these organizations increased markedly in late 1938 when Kristallnacht convinced more parents that the destruction of Jews was an element of the Nazi agenda. However, U.S. immigration and foreign policy continued to place limits on immigration. In the later period of 1941-42, larger groups were admitted when news of Nazi atrocities was more widely circulated.

In the official programs under HIAC, etc. foster families in the U.S. agreed to care for the children until age twenty-one, see that they were educated, and provided a guarantee that they would not become public charges. Most of the children were assigned a social worker from a local social service agency to oversee the child's resettlement process. Jewish children were generally placed in Jewish homes. These children, and their sponsors, expected that they would be reunited with their own families at the end of the conflict. Unfortunately most of the children lost one or both parents and most of their extended families by the time World War II had ended.

[edit] Historic documentation

The One Thousand Children story was first documented by Judith Baumel in her 1990 book Unfulfilled Promise. A later effort was made by Iris Posner in 2000, together with Leonore Moskowitz, who jointly founded the organization The One Thousand Children. Posner and Moskowitz's research found the names of virtually all the children and then managed to locate about 500 still alive. Posner and Moskowitz, under the aegis of their organization The One Thousand Children organized a three day International OTC Conference and Reunion in Chicago, Illinois in 2002. Approximately 200 attendees had the opportunity to listen and interact with over 50 speakers drawn from OTC children, their children and grandchildren and foster family members and other rescuers.

The Organization's archives are in process of being transferred to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. OTC Archives at the museum are the only such archives in the world and include video-recordings of the complete 2002 Conference as well as partial written transcripts. Many artifacts, including personal diaries written as children or later as adults, are included as well as data, information, and photographs. This archive is open to the public and scholars.

[edit] The British Kindertransport

A larger but similar British program, the Kindertransport, is more well-known. That effort brought approximately 10,000 similarly defined mainly Jewish children to the United Kingdom, between November 21, 1938 and September 3, 1939. While the Kindertransports came to England under a government sponsored and sanctioned program, this was not the case for the OTC children, where the 12 year effort was the result of the work of a "network of cooperation" among private American individuals and organizations.

[edit] External links

• [1] Details about the One Thousand Children's rescue, resettlement and lives as American citizens, including bibliography, multimedia, as well as photographs, individual stories, etc.
• [2] One Thousand Children's e-mail contact.
• [3] National Museum of American Jewish History, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

[edit] References

• Baumel, Judith T. Unfulfilled Promise. Danali Press, Juneau, AK 1990. ISBN: 093873721X
• Jason, Philip K. and Iris Posner, editors, Don't Wave Goodbye: The Children's Flight from Nazi Persecution to American Freedom . Praeger Greenwood Publishers, Westport, Connecticut, 2004. Contains individual memoirs. ISBN 0275982297.