Kindertransport - USA: The One Thousand Children (OTC)

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).