5 minute read
How the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants saved thousands of Jewish children
By Shelley Lieb and Ida Margolis
We all know the story about how the Jewish slaves escaped bondage in Egypt and retell it every Passover. During WWII, in occupied France, Jewish families were trying to escape without the guidance of Moses. The OSE/Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Children’s Aid Society) found a way for thousands of Jewish children to escape Nazi arrest and probable death. Many of the children were smuggled to Switzerland by ordinary young French citizens in an organized plan.
The plan and the people who put it into action were the subject of a recent exhibit at the FGCU Archives and Special Collections. Under the leadership of Melissa Minds VandeBergt (former head of the department), a team traveled to France and Switzerland last spring to experience the locale, the artifacts, the memorials and the reality of that history.
“They Were Children: Rescue as Resistánce” was displayed and open to the public at no charge for six months. Before it closed in March, GenShoah SWFL was invited for a special tour, lunch included. The exhibit included artifacts, maps, timelines, video and still images of the children and their rescuers as well as explanations regarding how the smuggling was carried out. It is estimated that the OSE and similar organizations rescued nearly 10,000 children from deportation to concentration camps from 1942-1945.
Testimonies available on the Yad Vashem website include those who were aided by OSE as children. This is an excerpt from the testimony of Yael (Capelluto) Rosenthal, born in Marseille, 1930:
Her mother was widowed, 1941; giving the children to the OSE a Jewish shelter organization; transfer of the children to a non-Jewish children's home in the SavoieHaute region; arrest of the mother in Compiegne and her deportation to Drancy camp; transfer of the children to Masgelier Jewish children's home, and to an orphanage run by nuns in the Aveyron region, 1943; meeting with young concentration camp survivors at the end of 1944. Life in a Jewish children's homes after the war; training for aliya in Marseille, 1951; aliya to Israel; life on Kibbutz Mesilot and Neve Ilan. (https://collections.yadvashem.org/ en/documents/3565591)
OSE was not just a WWII phenomena. According to its current website (https:// www.ose-france.org/en/), it was created in 1912 as The Society for the Health of the Jewish Population in Saint Petersburg (Russia). Its initial mission: to protect, feed and support Jewish children who were victims of poverty and persecution. It remains an important association in France and “holds dear its values of solidarity, humanism, professionalism and memory.”
Even when the war was over, OSE continued to support the children it had rescued into adulthood, if necessary, and to look after others who had been released from concentration camps. Into the present, OSE has maintained its commitment to children and to health issues and is “open to people of all backgrounds.”
Groups in various countries bring together OSE alumni, hidden children and survivors of the Shoah, as well as their friends and members of their families.
• The Amicale des Anciens et Sympathisants de l'OSE in France
• The Friends and Alumni of OSE-USA
• A group of OSE alumni meets regularly in Australia.
• In Israel, former hidden children are also very active within the Aloumim Association.Emily Murray from the FGCU Department of Archives and Special Collections speaks to GenShoah SWFL
This exhibit was a worthy and successful effort by our local university to provide an opportunity for students and the community at large to become more knowledgeable about an organization that, through resistance to a destructive force, was able to have a positive, lifesaving effect. Special thanks to Melissa Minds VandeBergt and her staff for the planning and execution of this exhibit. Hopefully, the department will continue to gift the Southwest Florida community with such meaningful exhibits.
About GenShoah SWFL ...
GenShoah SWFL is a group for children and descendants of Holocaust survivors and anyone interested in the mission of GenShoah of SWFL:
• Promotion of Holocaust education and human rights
• Preservation of history and memories of the Holocaust
• Connecting the second generation with one another
• Support of the Holocaust Museum & Janet G. and Harvey D. Cohen Education Center
There are no dues or forms to fill out. If you would like to receive our newsletter and program announcements, just send us an email to genshoahswfl@hmcec.org or liebro@gmail.com. If you would like to volunteer to help with future programs, please let us know that, too!
Thank you to those who support our mission, read the newsletter, attend GenShoah programs and are members of the Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center in Naples. We do encourage membership at the Museum, as we are an affinity organization with them. If you are not already a member of the Museum, please consider joining or making a donation.
