USA: The One Thousand Children (OTC)
A similar but much less organised effort to bring unaccompanied, mostly Jewish, children to the United States was known as the "One Thousand Children" (OTC). It brought to the United States, between November 1934 and May 1945, about 1400 mostly Jewish children, between the ages of 14 months and 16. Like the "kinder," these OTC children were forced to leave their parents behind in Europe. (Most of their parents were later murdered by the Nazis.) It is important that this too-little known OTC story is remembered in the larger story of Child Survivors of the Holocaust. (The reader is urged to follow the Wikipedia link "One Thousand Children".)
In contrast to the Kindertransport, for which the British Government had waived immigration visa requirements, these OTC children received no United States Government visa immigration assistance. Furthermore, it is documented that the State Department deliberately made it very difficult for any Jewish refugee to get an entrance visa. And it was even harder to get their parents appropriate papers, which is why the parents were forced to remain in Europe.
In 1939 Sen. Robert F. Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Edith Rogers (R-Mass.) proposed in the United States Congress the Wagner-Rogers Bill. This bill was to admit 20,000 Jewish children refugees under the age of 14 into the United States from Nazi Germany, who were unaccompanied, leaving their parents behind. However, in February 1939, this Bill failed to get Congressional approval.(see the One Thousand Children entry).
Read more about this topic: Kindertransport
Famous quotes containing the words thousand and/or children:
“or the warm soft side
Of the resigning yet resisting bride.
The kiss of virgins first-fruits of the bed;
Soft speech, smooth touch, the lips, the maidenhead;
These and a thousand sweets could never be
So near or dear as thou wast once to me.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)