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| Keywords: Buchenwald Children 06499.jpg A group of Jewish children wave goodbye as they depart by train from the Buchenwald concentration camp The original caption reads A group of Jewish children wave good bye to friends at the Buchenwald concentration camp They have been recently released and are on their way to France; from there some will go to Palestine some to the U S The Buchenwald children were a group of approximately 1000 Jewish child survivors found by American troops when they liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11 1945 Most of the children were originally from Poland though others came from Hungary Slovenia and Ruthenia Unsure of what to do with the child survivors American army chaplains Rabbi Herschel Schacter and Rabbi Robert Marcus contacted the offices of the OSE Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants Jewish children's relief organization in Geneva They arranged to send 427 of the children to France 280 to Switzerland and 250 to England Vivette Samuels reverses the figures for England and Switzerland in her monograph Sauver les Enfants On June 2 1945 OSE representatives arrived in Buchenwald and together with Rabbi Marcus escorted the transport of children to France Rabbi Schacter accompanied the second transport to Switzerland Because of the difficulty in finding clothing for the children the boys were clad in Hitler Youth uniforms This created a problem for when the train crossed into France it was greeted by an angry populace who assumed the train was carrying Nazi youth Thereafter the words KZ Buchenwald orphans were painted on the outside of the train to avoid confusion On June 6 1945 the French transport arrived at the Andelys station and the orphans were taken to a children's home in Ecouis Eure The home had been set up to accommodate young children but in fact only 30 of the boys were below the age of 13 This was only one of the many problems faced by the OSE personnel who were not prepared to handle a large group of demanding rebellious teenagers who were full of anger for what they had experienced At Ecouis the boys were given medical care counseling and schooling until more permanent accommodations could be found Most of the children remained only four to eight weeks at Ecouis before being moved elsewhere and the home was closed in August 1945 Among the first to leave were a group of 173 children who had family in Palestine They were given immigration certificates and departed from Marseilles in July aboard the British vessel the RMS Mataroa The remaining boys at Ecouis were soon transferred to other residences and homes Some of the older ones were sent to the Foyer d'Etudiants located on the rue Rollin in Paris where they boarded while attending vocational training courses or working at jobs in the city Others were sent to the Chateau de Boucicaut home in Fontenay-aux-Roses Hauts-de-Seine Many of the boys came from religiously observant homes Since the OSE could not obtain kosher food for everyone they divided the children into religious and non-religious groups Dr Charly Merzbach offered OSE the use of his estate the Chateau d'Ambloy Loir-et-Cher for the summer and between 90 and 100 boys chose to go there in order to receive kosher food and live in a religious environment In October 1945 the children and staff of Ambloy were relocated to the Chateau de Vaucelles in Taverny Val d'Oise About 50 of the non-religious boys were taken to the Villa Concordiale in Le Vesinet Yvelines near Paris that housed an equal number of French Jewish orphans In the summer they went to the Foyer de Champigny in Champigny-sur-Marne Val-de-Marne In all the homes attended by the Buchenwald children vocational training as well as regular classroom instruction was offered At the same time OSE social workers made every effort to locate surviving relatives succeeding in about half the cases By the end of 1948 all of the Buchenwald children who had come to France had left the OSE fold and begun new lives for themselves Buchenwald Thuringia Germany June 5 1945 http //www ushmm org/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration College Park PD-USGov Buchenwald children Images from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum People on trains Jewish children | ||||
