Talk:One Thousand Children

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[edit] The American Rescue of Children of the Holocaust

• Note: This segment is in part copied from the discussion page of Kindertransport. WBardwin 06:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC). It is augmented by contributions of Iris Posner, president of the "One Thousand Children" organization.

Over a twelve year period, approximately fourteen hundred unaccompanied mainlly Jewish children were also tranported from across Europe by private American organizations and individuals to distant relatives, other foster families, and institutions in the U.S., in an effort to rescue them from inevitable destruction by the Nazis. Their story, still virtually unknown, is still being researched. This whole group is known as the "One Thousand Children." OTC is the acronym.

We first present the story of one individual OTC child. Then we present more general details. Finally at the end of this entry, we present some more individual stories of the OTC children,, as written in their own words.

MANFRED: In 1938, fearing the growing terror that was to become known as the Holocaust, Manfred's parents arranged for their only child to be sent to America. He was thirteen years old. In his diary about the voyage to freedom, which Manfred Goldwein sent to his parents, he wrote, "I hope that you will be over here soon. But meanwhile, may G-d bless you and keep you in good health. May He free you very soon...so that we may be together in a country that is too great to describe." In 1946, still not knowing the fate of his parents, Manfred searched for them in his hometown of Korbach, Germany. A gentile neighbor had something for him. At risk to her own life, she had hidden Manfred's diary and his parents last letters to him.

Manfred's mother wrote, "I know that you and all the dear ones over there have done all to save us but fate decided otherwise. ..Don't forget us, my dear son, as we shall never forget you. Farewell, my dear child. I hug and kiss you.Your mother!" His father, a Rabbi wrote "You must not be sad, for we are in G-d's dear Hand and really in G-d's own land. I love you for ever and ever." Manfred, later to become a distinguished American physician and teacher, had found the fate of his parents, victims of Nazi persecution that ended for them in Auschwitz.

Now to some more general details of the OTC story:

While a generation of 1.5 million children perished in the Holocaust, approximately fourteen hundred children were brought to America in quiet operations designed to avoid a backlash from isolationist and anti-Semitic forces that could shut it down. Some children did also come under private arrangements made by their parents. The rescues were funded and carried out by private citizens, organizations, and by hundreds of volunteers. The rescue operations, which spanned three continents, two oceans and twelve years from 1934 to 1945, brought children from fourteen months old through the age of sixteen to the U.S. and placed them in foster families, with relatives, and in schools and facilities across America to await the time, if it would ever come, that they could be reunited with their own families. Unfortunately most of the children lost one or both parents and most or all of their extended families by the time the war had ended.

This story of triumph within tragedy is virtually unknown. Many of the children themselves (most now in their seventies and eighties) are unaware that they were part of an organized effort to bring to America as many children as possible, of those threatened by Nazi persecution. Few Americans and even historians know the details of the powerful economic, social, political, religious and governmental constraints that had to be overcome.

Only one scholar has published a book about the One Thousand Children which examines the complex interplay of factors that resulted in the rescue of just over 1,000 mostly Jewish children. "Unfulfilled Promise" by Professor Judith Baumel, Ph.D., was published in Sept. 1990 by the small, Denali Press in Juneau, Alaska, ISBN: 093873721X.

Another book presents some individual stories written by the children at the time or recently: 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. ISBN 0275982297.

The first small organized 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 and institutions, many of which had been arranged through appeals to congregations and organizations' members. Prior to 1941, small groups were brought because there was hostility to allowing foreigners to enter the U.S. during the Depression. Sponsors wanted to avoid drawing undue attention to the children, whose immigration was limited to quotas for their countries of origin.

The demand on these organizations increased markedly in late 1938 when "Kristallnacht" convinced even the most naïve and optimistic parents that the destruction of the Jews was the true Nazi agenda. However, U. S. policy as well as practical limitations frustrated that upswell of panic. In the later period of 1941-42, when news of Nazi terrors was more widely circulated, larger groups arrived. Foster families and institutions in the U.S. agreed to care for the children until age twenty-one, see that they were educated, and 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 placed in Jewish homes.

Several dozen organizations played important roles in bringing those OTC children who did not come under private sponsorship to freedom. These included the German Jewish Children's Aid (GJCA), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the B'nai B'rith, "Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants" (OSE), the American Friends Service Committee, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), the United States Committee for the Care of Refugee Children (USC), the National Coordinating Committee and Brith Sholom Temple.

Among the unsung heroes and heroines of the rescue effort were men and women who led or worked for these and other organizations: Dr. Gabrielle Kaufmann, Ph.D., who accompanied the very first group and supervised OTC children who had to be temporarily housed in the Clara De Hirsch Home in New York; Cecilia Razovsky, who as a leader of NCJW immigration services and the GJCA, accomplished small and large miracles in this arduous and politically delicate operation; Kate Rosenheim and Herta Souhami, Director and staff member respectively of the "Kinderauswanderung Department of the Central Organization of German Jews" in Germany, which coordinated with foreign Jewish organizations all over the world to find emigration opportunities for children at severe risk; Joseph Chamberlain, who founded the National Coordinating Committee and also chaired its successor, and the National Refugee Service, responsible for orchestrating the efforts of over two dozen refugee assistance organizations.

Among individuals, these included Eleanor Roosevelt, whose honorary presidency of the USC gave it prestige; Marshall Field III, whose inspired leadership gave that same agency credible financing and management; Lotte Marcuse, Director of Placement for GJCA, whose successful efforts helped find the needed homes for the new Americans; individuals such as Martha Cogan (UUSC) and Gilbert and Eleanore Kraus (Brith Sholom) who, at great personal risk, traveled to Europe to find and rescue children threatened by Nazi persecution.

Also, very importantly, American and European escorts who brought the children from Europe to America, many of whom were women who traveled back and forth at great risk, spending time away from their own families; the families that let their children go, and, the American families, related and not, who provided care and shelter to OTC children.

Despite the fact that most OTC children had to live with not knowing the whereabouts or well-being their families, experienced foster families, schoolmates and teachers, some of whom were supportive and some not supportive at all, were declared refugees of enemy countries, and for many, were drafted into or volunteered for the armed forces and sent back overseas, yet most quickly adjusted and assimilated into American culture and society.

OTC children as adults became teachers, businessmen, scientists, physicians, lawyers, career military officers, statesmen, scholars, a rock and roll impresario, artists, writers, publishers,loyal citizens and loving parents. (We present some individual stories below. They created their legacies through the contributions of their work and lives. They followed the path that Manfred's father spoke of in his last letter to his son: " I want you to walk His ways. You are a link of the long chain that began in the past and reaches into eternity. Be a worthy man."

Now to some more individual stories:

RICHARD: Richard Schifter was an only child. Determined their son must survive, his parents sent him to America in 1938, where he soon became conversant in English, graduated first in his high school class and later second in his class at the City University of New York. He fulfilled his life's dream when he became an American Ambassador and Special Assistant to an American President. Unable to save his own parents from the catastrophe of the Holocaust, he worked to get Jews out of Russia and told them, "I didn't get my parents out but I won't fail you." And he didn't.

JACK: In 1934, Jack Steinberger and his bother were sent to America by their parents who feared the worst about what was happening in Germany. After graduating from high school in the U.S., Jack worked in the family delicatessen to earn the money to attend college where he studied chemical engineering and later physics. In 1988, Jack and two colleagues won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of new sub-atomic particles.

BILL: His funeral memorial was attended by thousands of ordinary people and the "creme de la creme" of the world of Rock and Roll. He was Bill Graham, the legendary impresario and father of the modern American music business who launched such icons of Rock as, Otis Redding, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. He was born Wolfgang Grajonca in Berlin and at the age of eleven was brought to America to stay with a foster family in N.Y.C.

WERNER: Werner Michel arrived in America at age twelve with no knowledge of English and was initially placed in kindergarten. He became a career military officer, served in three wars and was Director of Counterintelligence and Security at the Defense Intelligence Agency and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight with responsibility for oversight of all Department of Defense intelligence and counterintelligence activities

Iris Posner President One Thousand Children, Inc.

Additional information resource: [www.onethousandchildren.org]

A primary source for the above, edited by the above contributor, is:

• "Don't Wave Goodbye: The Children's Flight from Nazi Persecution to American Freedom" (Hardcover) by Philip K. Jason (Editor), Iris Posner (Editor). Praeger Publishers (June 30, 2004), ISBN: 0275982297.