HIAS Story Excerpt

The Story of The One Thousand Children

by IRIS POSNER and PHILIP JASON

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 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. 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, Ayou 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.

While a generation of 1.5 million children perished in the Holocaust, approximately one thousand children—like Manfred—were brought to America in quiet operations designed to avoid a backlash from isolationist and anti-Semitic forces that could shut it down. The rescues were funded and carried out by private citizens and organizations and by hundreds of volunteers. The rescue operations, which spanned three continents, two oceans and eleven years from 1934 to1945, 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 many other relatives by the time the war had ended.

This story of triumph within tragedy is virtually unknown. American history books do not mention it, nor do Holocaust museums and memorials celebrate the lives of these rescued children and those people and organizations who rescued them. There are no movies about it, and its heroes remain unheralded. 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 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 1990 by the small, Denali Press in Juneau, Alaska.

Richard 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.

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 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 na�ve 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 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.

In 1934, Jack 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, 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 Noble Prize in Physics for the discovery of new sub-atomic particles.

A number of the one thousand children (OTC), like Lea, report specific memories of being aided by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), "My sister and I had received, with the help of HIAS, passage on the Rex." Several dozen other organizations played important roles in bringing the OTC children to freedom including the German Jewish Children's Aid (GJCA), the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), 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.

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.

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 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, the National Refugee Service, responsible for orchestrating the efforts of over two dozen refugee assistance organizations; 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; 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; and, the families, both related and not related to the OTC children, who provided care and shelter to OTC children.

Werner arrived in America at age twelve with no knowledge of English and was initially placed in kindergarten. He became a career 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 worldwide.

OTC children quickly assimilated into American culture and society and much can be learned from that experience. OTC children live with memories of parents and siblings murdered in concentration camps, being declared enemy aliens and then, for many of the boys being drafted into or volunteering for the armed forces. They had foster families, schoolmates and teachers, some of whom were supportive and some destructive. Yet, as a group OTC children are inordinately successful, becoming teachers, businessmen, scientists, physicians, lawyers, career military officers, statesmen, scholars, a rock and roll impresario, artists, writers, publishers, loyal Americans and loving husband, wives and parents of successful second generation children.

Herb arrived in America an independent and self-reliant teenager determined to put himself through school. He became a distinguished psychologist and was the first to write about and use the phrase, "burnout."

Manfred, Lea, Richard, Werner, Herb, Bill and other OTC children have 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."

It is time for America to celebrate the lives of the OTC children, honor the individuals and organizations that made their rescue possible, and to make their story part of the fabric of the American historical record.

*Iris Posner and Philip Jason are currently preparing an anthology for publication that will include first person accounts related to the OTC story.

About the Authors

Iris Posner, M.P.A., was President and co-founder of One Thousand Children, Inc. (OTC). As a Social Science Researcher, she authored or co-wrote scholarly studies that have appeared in health related scientific publications. Ms. Posner is an R.N., holds a Masters in Public Administration from Baruch College. She received her bachelors degree from and has completed additional doctoral level work at Columbia University.

Philip K. Jason, Ph.D., is a widely published scholar and critic, and an experienced anthologist. Best known as an expert on the literature of war, he has served as editor or co-editor of such volumes as: Fourteen Landing Zones: Approaches to Vietnam War Literature (University of Iowa Press, 1991), Retrieving Bones: Stories and Poems of the Korean War (Rutgers University Press, 1999), and the Encyclopedia of American War Literature (Greenwood Press, 2001). He has also prepared several reference books, critical monographs, poetry collections and the Creative Writer's Handbook, now in its 3rd edition. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

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