Sprache:
Englisch
Erscheinungsjahr:
2014
Titel der Quelle:
American Jewish Archives
Angaben zur Quelle:
66,1-2 (2014) 35-58
Schlagwort(e):
World Jewish Congress
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Rescue
;
Jewish children in the Holocaust
Kurzfassung:
Relates the little-known story of the rescue in 1943-44 by the World Jewish Congress of several thousand Jewish children, mainly from France and Belgium. Ca. 700 of the children, joined by some 200 parents, were clandestinely transferred, through French and Spanish territory, to Portugal. A vital role in this operation was played by Isaac Weissman, an emissary of the WJC in Lisbon. He laid the infrastructure for the rescue operations by setting up a clandestine system for communication among the WJC offices around the world, working with resistance groups in France and Belgium, and taking steps to formalize the legal status of the Jewish refugees in Portugal. The rescue operation began in 1943 when the French resistance informed the WJC of an ongoing Nazi operation to apprehend Jewish children hiding in private homes and Catholic institutions. Hundreds of Jewish children were transferred to Portugal, and 1,350 to Switzerland. The WJC, from its establishment in 1936, was a philanthropic body unaccustomed to underground activities; Weissman and the WJC leadership had to master the techniques. They faced other hardships and impediments, including opposition on the part of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the small Jewish community of Portugal. Surmises that the extant historiography has ignored the WJC's role in the wartime rescue of Jewish children because many of the writers are representatives of rival Jewish bodies, such as the Jewish Agency.
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