Who are the One Thousand Children?

We are the "children," mainly Jewish, who came as refugees from Europe directly to America to flee Hitler's threat, but because of various circumstances were forced to leave our parents behind. Tragically, nearly all of our parents were murdered by Hitler. We came during the years 1934-1945, and our ages then varied from 16 months up to 16 years old (chosen as an upper limit). We are now senior citizens. 

Our story is similar to the Kindertransport Holocaust Child Survivors, those kids who were rescued from continental Europe and came to England. But we OTC'ers came directly to America. The story of the Kindertransport is well known; but our own OTC story, in which we came directly to America, is too little-known. We also are truly Child Survivors of the Holocaust, as discussed in the next section.

In 1938, fearing the growing terror that was to become known as the Holocaust, Manfred's German parents arranged for their only child to be sent to America. He was thirteen years old. In his travel diary about his voyage to freedom, which Manfred Goldwein immediately sent to his parents, he wrote, "I hope that you will be over here soon. But meanwhile, may God 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 parent’s last letters to him. His 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 God's Dear Hand and really in God's own land… 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…  I love you for ever and ever."

Manfred, later to become a distinguished American physician and teacher, had discovered the fate of his parents, victims of Nazi persecution that ended for them in Auschwitz.

Are the OTC children Child Survivors of the Holocaust?

Some people would say "no." The OTC children were not in concentration camps. (There are almost no child survivors of concentration camps, as children were immediately exterminated.) The OTCers did not even experience the entire war in Nazi-occupied lands. They were in the safety of America. Some fled Germany and other European countries as early as 1934, and many fled before WWII (though a few fled as late as 1945). But all the OTCers fled to escape the true threat of Hitler's plans to exterminate all Jews – first expressed in 1926, in Mein Kampf ("Right now anti-Semitism, however, must lead to a systematic legal opposition.... its final objectives must unswervingly be the removal of Jews altogether) and then made ever more explicit by the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, and finally by the Wansee Conference, which officially set forth the program of annihilation.

We OTC children would have been exterminated if we had not fled. Tragically, we did leave our parents behind (usually for them to be murdered). Yes, we do not bear numbers on our arms, but we went through many powerful traumas because of Hitler's threat. We truly are child survivors of the Holocaust. 

Thea Lindauer Emphatically Declares: "I am a child survivor of the Holocaust"

Website Credits

This website is based on one previously created by Claude Kacser, Erwin Tepper, and Dan Tepper.

In 2013, One Thousand Children transferred its records and website to YIVO.