One Thousand Children - The OTC Children

The OTC Children

For many of the OTC children, the period before they reached America was very difficult. Before World War II, most were simply assembled by Rescue Agencies directly from their home towns in Germany and Austria, and then easily escorted to America. But after the war started, nearly all of them went through extreme hardships and dangers before they boarded ship for the United States. Some did travel to the port with parents, but many traveled alone, at least for part of their flight. Some were smuggled over the Pyrenees (usually with their parents). Some were incarcerated for a time in concentration camps such as Gurs internment camp in southern France, while some spent time in a French château run by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants. It was usually only late in a journey that a Rescue Agency would start escorting the children.

Before the war, some of the OTC children came by individual arrangements made by their family, in which the child would be sent into the care of a relative in America. In America, they would either live with that family, or perhaps placed in a boarding school.

The difficulties these OTC children went through in America must also be stressed. Usually the children arrived not being able to speak English, and so they were held behind in school grade placement (though most rapidly learned English and then advanced rapidly in school-grade). Most were placed either in "foster-families" some of which were loving and some not; or they were placed in various types of institutions, some caring, and some not. They all had been taken away from their families. The older ones fully knew the dangers their left-behind parents faced from the Nazi threat.

Most OTC children went on to contribute greatly to American society:

• One OTC child, Jack Steinberger, became a Nobel Laureate in physics.
• Another OTC child, Ambassador Richard Schifter, was first of the Ritchie Boys during and after World War II, and then had a very significant diplomatic and legal career, and most importantly was the U.S. Ambassador for Human Relations at the United Nations.
• Bill Graham, promoter of the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones and of many other Rock musicians and concerts.
• Many other of the OTC contributed in a myriad of ways.