One Thousand Children - Early History

Early History

Although some 1.5 million children perished in the Holocaust, approximately 1,400 children were brought to America in quiet operations designed to avoid attention from isolationist and antisemitic forces. (Originally only about one thousand such children had been identified as OTC children — hence the name "The One Thousand Children") (OTC) These children:

• came from Europe directly to the United States mainly from 1934 through 1945;
• were aged up through the age of sixteen (the "arbitrary" cut-off age, before they were considered adults). Remarkably, the youngest was actually only fourteen months old;
• arrived unaccompanied, leaving their parents behind, and
• were then placed with foster families, schools and facilities across the U.S.

The first small group of six children arrived in New York City in November 1934. This and subsequent small groups, totaling about 100 annually in the early years of operation, were taken to foster homes arranged through appeals to congregations and organizations' members.

Most of the children came through official programs run by refugee Agencies such as the German Jewish Children's Aid (GJCA), The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), the Joint Distribution Committee ("the Joint"), and the Society of Friends (the Quakers).

For instance, many of the OTC children were initially gathered together, supported, looked after, and educated by the French Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE), sometimes for many months in the OSE "chateaux." Only then was OSE able to pass them on to the "Joint" and the Quakers, which then took them to the United States. Under the leadership of Andree Salomon, OSE did manage to gather together about 350 such children in three large groups, many from the Gurs internment camp. (These about 350 children belong simultaneously to both OTC and OSE.)

It is important to recognize the heroic efforts made by all these organizations to save these children, even if the number actually saved was not large. There were many heroic individuals involved with these organizations, including Kate Rosenheim and Cecelia Razovsky.

Other children came under private arrangements and sponsorship, typically made by the parent(s) with a family relative or friend. Such children would live with their sponsor, or sometimes live in a boarding school in close contact with their sponsor.

Before 1941, only small groups were brought into the country by such organizations, because of social hostility to allowing foreigners to enter the U.S. during the Depression. Sponsoring organizations wanted to avoid drawing undue attention to the children, whose immigration was limited by quotas for their countries of origin.

The demand on these organizations increased markedly in late 1938 when Kristallnacht convinced more parents that the destruction of Jews was an element of the Nazi agenda. However, U.S. immigration and foreign policy continued to place limits on immigration. The proposed Wagner–Rogers Bill to admit 20,000 Jewish refugees under the age of 14 to the United States from Nazi Germany, co‑sponsored by Sen. Robert F. Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Edith Rogers (R-Mass.), failed to get Congressional approval in February 1939. Jewish organizations did not feel able to challenge this decision. Even the Ickes plan for settling Jews in Alaska, known as the Slattery Report, failed to get approval.

In the later period of 1941–1942, larger groups of OTC children were organized and arrived in the U.S.A, when news of Nazi atrocities was more widely circulated. A few of the children came under the British Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) program, as well as the non-governmental "U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children" (USCOM)

In the official programs under the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), German Jewish Children's Aid Society, (GJCA), the Quakers, etc., foster families in the U.S. agreed to care for the children until age twenty-one, see that they were educated, and provided a guarantee that they would not become public charges. Most of these children were assigned a social worker from a local social service agency to oversee the child's resettlement process. Jewish children were generally placed in Jewish homes. These children, and their sponsors, expected that they would be reunited with their own families at the end of the conflict. Most of the children lost one or both parents and most of their extended families by the time World War II had ended.

The OTC story is similar to that of the kindertransport in which unaccompanied children came from mainland Europe to Great Britain. That program was "created" by the British government when it waived all visa requirements for such children. This contrasts greatly with the OTC program, for which most the US government did not waive any visa requirements. reports that the State Department had a deliberately obstructionist paper walls policy in operation to delay or prevent the issuing of any officially permitted visas. This Paper Wall contributed to the low number of refugees. From July 1941 all immigration applications went to a special inter-departmental committee, and under the “relatives rule” special scrutiny was given to any applicant with relatives in German, Italian or Russian territory. From July 1943 a new visa application form over four feet long was used, with details required of the refugee and of the two sponsors; and six copies had to be submitted. Applications took about nine months, and were not expedited even in cases of imminent danger. Furthermore, from fall 1943, applications from refugees “not in acute danger” could be refused (e.g. people who had reached Spain, Portugal or North Africa). This created a huge barrier, since many of these children (usually with their parents) had fled there from other parts of Europe, some by being smuggled over the Pyrenees.

The One Thousand Children were not aided in any way by the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government made only one "positive" effort: "The Oswego NY Safe Haven" scheme