Category:Holocaust Refugee Children, Switzerland (subject)

Holocaust Refugee Children, Switzerland (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Kastner Train -- Nonantola Children
USHMM Database under: "Source: Jewish Arrivals In Switzerland, 1938-1945" (almost 6000 names)

Overview

The official policy was to limit the tide of incoming refugees in Switzerland. As of 13 August 1942, a Swiss Federal Council ruling stipulated that persons fleeing for racial reasons could not be considered as political refugees. However, children under 16 years of age could not be repelled at the frontier.

Approximately 1,100 children passed the Franco-Swiss border between February 1943 and July 1944.

Around 1,000 additional children came trough the Italo-Swiss border, out of 6,000 refugees from Italy.

Most children arrived in Switzerland illegally thru the French or the Italian border, but a few hundreds did it legally from Nazi Germany on board on the Kastner Train from Hungary or the 5 February 1945 Train from Theresienstadt. They were liberated in the last months of the war in exchange for money.

Youth Aliyah Homes in Switzerland

Versoix =

Versoix which opened on March 3, 1943 , was the first Youth Aliyah children's home in Switzerland. The Jewish Agency rented the former Institut Monier near Geneva in order to prepare youth for their future lives in a Kibbutz in Palestine. About 70 youth between the ages of 12 and 20 and 10 staff members lived in the home. The home was pluralistic and tolerant as the youth had affiliations with several different Zionist movements, both secular and religious. Most of the teenagers originally came from Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and France and crossed the border illegally into Switzerland. Their daily routine was divided into work and studies, and some of the older boys studied in Geneva in the ORT college and elsewhere. The home closed on May 29, 1945 after the bulk of the residents left for Palestine. A smaller number of youth rejoined families who had survived the Holocaust.

Les Murailles

Group portrait of Jewish refugee youth outside the Murailles children's home in Geneva. Pictured from left to right are: (front row) Alex Alter, Ludwig Mayer and Manfred Filipson; (second row) Kurt Frost, Otto Weiner, Yankel ?, and Theodore Brenig.

Group portrait of Jewish refugee children in Les Murailles children's home in Geneva. Among those pictured are Manfred Filipson (standing on the left with glasses), Theodore Brenig (middle), Alex Alter (next to him), David Bergman, Otto Weiner (right), Ludwig Meier (back left), Simon Nudel (standing fourth from right), and Tuvia Hirsch (third from right).