Our Story

The Story of the One Thousand Children

by IRIS POSNER

1933 was the best of times and the worst of times. In America, 25% of working men and women were unemployed in the Great Depression but Prohibition was ended and the World's Fair opened in Chicago.

But some Germans in 1933 were celebrating, for this was the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Back in the U. S. , the most popular songs in America were an omen of things to come - Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, Stormy Weather, Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. In Germany, the book burning had started. The world was on the road to WWII and the terror that was to be known as the Holocaust. Most people couldn't or wouldn't look down that road but a few did. Among them were parents of Jewish children, who unable to leave Europe themselves, chose to resist the Nazi plan for their destruction by sending their children away. And in America there were organizations and individuals determined to fight any obstacle to save these children. In 1933, planning started on both sides of the ocean.

Trudy, an OTC child, recalls the fateful decision of her parents to send her to America:

My father lost his business but started to work for the Jewish Self Help Agency in Stuttgart. He prepared the documents and transactions necessary for people who had visas to leave the country and he helped them pack their belongings , in some cases even accompanying them to the port of embarkation, thus helping them to expedite their departures. Through this work with the Agency he found out about the very secret and limited Kindertransport of Jewish children to the United States. He applied for me without telling me, and so one day he came home and told me that I needed to get a children's passport just in case I would be one of the children selected to go to America. I was stunned and could not comprehend what he had said. I was fourteen years old and frustrated with my restricted existence as a Jewish child. There was no escaping the fact that few options existed for my family of four to leave the Third Reich as a family intact. I knew that there was no help to come from our relatives, who had just emigrated themselves, so I agreed that my father's decision was one way, if it worked, to increase the chances of the rest of the family's future. From that day on I thought of nothing but the chance to go into a new world.

From Don't Wave Goodbye,  a first of its kind collection of first-person accounts by several dozen of the One Thousand Children, now commonly referred to as the "OTC children" and "OTC rescuers."

While a generation of 1.5 million children perished in the Holocaust, approximately one thousand children -- like Trudy -- 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 twelve 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. For some parents, sending their children away was almost more than they could bear.

Unfortunately some parents did commit suicide after sending their children away. In one case, we know the child was informed of this at the pier upon arriving in America.

A little-known story

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 or 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. When I asked the owner of this press, Alan Schorr, why he had published the book when others would not, he said, "Because it was the right thing to do." (By the way, he has still not recovered the cost of publishing this book.)

After 18 months of planning, 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 the members of congregations and organizations. 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, overt and covert, as well as practical limitations frustrated actions that might have been taken in the midst of the increasing panic and desperation among the parents of OTC children and rescuers. Terrorized parents in Europe seeking help anywhere even wrote directly to Eleanor Roosevelt for help, having heard of her work to save children.

In the later period of 1941-1942, 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 their resettlement process. Jewish children were placed in Jewish homes. Not all the OTC children were Jewish; a small percent were Christian and were placed in Christian homes. By contrast, the British rescue of unaccompanied Jewish children from the Holocaust, known as Kindertransports, took place only over some 18 months and many of the children were placed with Christian families and in group homes; some were also converted to Christianity and there are reports that many were used as servants. Though this misuse occasionally occurred in the U.S., when discovered, usually by the assigned social worker,the children were removed and placed with other families. (The OTC children themselves would also report these situations and request removal.) One such child removed herself from seven homes before settling in with an eighth family with whom she stayed until she married. Many OTC children report continued strong ties to their foster families; often introducing their own children to them as "family."

Special note must be made of the part women played in the OTC rescues, beginning with the foster mothers who often were also caring for one or more natural children. In addition, it was women at the National Council of Jewish Women who helped initiate the rescue effort, and, in the beginning, provided the funding for the rescue operations by funneling money raised for the purpose up to the national organization which in turn provided it to the German Jewish Children's Aid, which ran the rescue machinery and was headed by two women. Lastly, the European counterpart to the GJCA was headed by two women, in later years at great personal risk. The pressure on these women and their organizations was enormous and grew on a daily basis as Hitler's plan for the extermination of the Jewish people and others was put into action and it became more obvious to even the most naïve of human beings. Letters, telegrams, and phone calls poured in and with it criticism for not doing more faster, and from some, for doing too much too fast.

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.

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 UUSC 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
• The families, both related and not related to the OTC children, who provided care and shelter to OTC children.

Lives of the OTC Children

While OTC children appear to have quickly assimilated into American culture and society, learning English in about six months, they live with memories of parents and siblings they had to leave behind and could not save.

You will remember Trudy who anxiously awaited her chance to go to a new world. Trudy was twelve when she boarded a train in Vienna, clutching her porcelain doll. It was August 1939. As the train pulled out of the station and the girl strained to make her last look at her father last as long as possible, she saw him do something she had never seen him do before: he bowed his head and cried. Trudy never saw him again, or her mother. They were sent to a ghetto in Latvia. From there, they exchanged letters with Trude until 1941. Then their letters stopped. She learned later that both were killed in the ghetto.

After the US declared war on Germany, many OTC children were declared enemy aliens and then, many of the boys were drafted into or volunteered for the armed forces.

Arnold Weiss graduated from high school along with his foster brothers, Bobby and Jay, and joined the Army with them. All three served in combat in Europe. His infantry division stormed into Nuremberg and blasted it apart. At the Dachau concentration camp, he found his father’s identification card.

OTC children had foster families, schoolmates and teachers, and some of whom were supportive and some destructive, as was the experience of a "childhood" they never had.

An OTC child I spoke to expressed some of the lingering psychological effects felt by the children even in their adult years. The man, who came here when he was seven and later had three children of his own, told me how he had been affected by his experience. He said “I just could never play with my own children.”

The amazing thing is that despite all the obstacles they had to surmount, as a group, OTC children are inordinately successful, having become teachers, businessmen, scientists, physicians, lawyers, career military officers, statesmen, scholars, a rock and roll impresario, artists, writers, publishers; loyal Americans and loving husbands and wives; and parents of successful second generation children.

Richard was an only child. Determined that their son must survive, his parents sent him to America, 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.

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. He 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.

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.

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 New York City.

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."

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 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.

Manfred, Lea, Richard, Trudy, 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  American historical record. Because we must remember,  regardless of our individual differences as Americans. As writer Charles Snyder has written, we all have an "intellectual, spiritual, and moral connection to the Holocaust. In the world as we know it, the lessons of the Holocaust have assumed even greater meaning. Organized hatred as political doctrine now and once again threatens civilization, while religious intolerance, ethnic persecution, and cultural prejudice persist and grow ever more dangerous and lethal, as threats to minorities, to states and to the international community of man."

About the Author

Iris Posner is President and co-founder of One Thousand Children, Inc. (OTC). Under her leadership OTC identified virtually all of the OTC children, numbering about 1,200, and established communications with over 400 across the U.S. and in five foreign countries. Ms. Posner also oversaw the collection and analysis of primary archival materials pertaining to OTC history, a unique archive in the world of Holocaust scholarship. In conducting these activities, she established working relationships with all the major repositories of Holocaust and American Jewish history. Prior to assuming the Presidency of OTC, Ms. Posner had a successful career in both the arts and sciences. 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, and has completed additional doctoral-level work at Columbia University. Ms. Posner is also a fine art photographer and filmmaker. One of her films was honored with a Silver Medal at the New York International Film and Television Festival. She has served as a Communications Consultant for several major American corporations.