Category:Tehran Children (subject)

The Tehran Children were a group of about one thousand Jewish children who had fled eastward from Poland with their families at the outbreak of World War II. Many of them had lost their parents during their flight. These orphans were allowed to emigrate from the USSR along with 23,000 Polish soldiers and refugees, under an agreement signed by the Polish Government-in-exile and the Soviet government allowing for the enlistment of Polish refugees in the Soviet Union in the (Polish) Anders Army. In the spring and summer of 1942, the children were taken to Tehran along with the other refugees and soldiers. After immigration permits were obtained from the British, the children were brought to Palestine via Karachi and Suez on February 18, 1943.

History

The "Tehran Children" escaped from Poland to Russia after Germany conquered it in September 1939, or lived in regions annexed to the Soviet Union following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 (see Appendix I on the JewishGen Yizkor book site), which divided Poland between the two powers. Some of the children's original Polish towns moved from German hands to Russian and via versa (see Appendix II on the JewishGen Yizkor book site) during the period in which the Jews ran away, fleeing eastward from certain death, as history proved later. There were around 300,000 such refugees, according to some estimates. (See Note 2).

In the beginning of 1940 the Soviet authorities, through the NKWD, began mass expulsion of Polish citizens to gulags in Siberia. Many hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, many Jews among them, were expelled to the depth of Russian Siberia. After weeks of a horrible journey in cattle cars, the deportees were settled in Siberia and lived under harsh and difficult conditions. The mortality rate was very high; many of the children died or became orphans in this period.

On June 22nd, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the U.S.S.R. despite the non-aggression pact between them, and a new era started for the Polish refugees, Jews among them. An amnesty was declared; as a result all the Polish citizens were set free from the gulags (see Appendix III on the JewishGen Yizkor book site). A mass emigration started, towards the Asian territories, mainly Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan.

A wave of hungry and sick refugees, wearing torn rags, flooded the towns of Tashkent, Samarqand, and others. Many of the children lost their parents in this period, and many of the children themselves died of hunger and epidemics.

At the same time, Lt-General Wladyslaw Anders was freed from prison in Moscow and founded the Polish Armies in Exile, which would attack Germany in Italy, passing through the Middle East. The Soviet authorities agreed to the emigration of about 24,000 Polish citizens with the Anders army, including around 1,000 Jewish children, most of them orphans, and 800 Jewish adults.

By the end of 1941, Sikorski, the prime minister of the Polish Government-in-exile, managed to convince Stalin to send around 25,000 Polish soldiers of the Anders Armies to Iran, to arm themelves and to strengthen the British armies in the Middle East. Thirty-three thousand soldiers left, 11,000 citizens with them, including 3,000 children, of which about 1,000 were orphaned Jewish children. (See Note 3). The "Tehran Children" left in trains from Samarqand to Krasnovodsk, and from there, through the Caspian Sea to Pahlevi, an Iranian port town on the Caspian southern shores. From there they moved to Tehran.

In Pahlevi, refugee tent camps were immediately erected. The Jewish children suffered from heat, starvation, sicknesses, and also the abuses by their fellow Poles. The situation changed once the Jewish Agency learned about the refugees' camps and opened its Eretz Israel Office in Tehran. Messengers and instructors were sent to the camp; as a result, living conditions improved significantly. It is worth mentioning that Tzipora Sharet, a leader from the Yishuv in Eretz Israel, contributed to the children's welfare. David Lauberg (Laor), one of the adult refugees, was appointed to be the head of the camp. In 1995, David Laor submitted many documents, photographs and items to Yad Vashem. This material was the basis for another book about the "Tehran Children" published by Yad Vashem (Hebrew) "I Did not Have Time to be Sad", 1996 (the story of Kaner Majloch from Pruchnik, a symbol of the children's odyssey).

In January 1943, the evacuation of the tent-city began. The children moved to Afhaz and then to the Iranian port of Bender Shapur, where they embarked on the S.S. Dunera, headed to Karachi. This route was chosen since the Iraqis refused to grant them transit visas through Iraq. From Karachi they embarked on another ship, the Neurolia, which sailed to Suez, Egypt. Then they crossed the Sinai Desert by train, they were quarantined in El Arish for another two days, and finally after an odyssey of four years of agony, they arrived home and disembarked the train in Atlit in Eretz Israel ("Palestine" at that time), on February 18th, 1943.

The second group (of around 110 children) arrived via Iraq after the British suppressed the Rashid Ali's revolt that year.

The small Yishuv (the name of the Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel prior to the foundation of the State of Israel) rejoiced and welcomed the little children as if a miracle had happened. The children were distributed among Kibbutzim, Moshavim, and various educational institutions. Natan N. Alterman, the famous Hebrew poet, wrote a poem which is well known about the Tehran Children, "who also after they will grow old, will always remain "the Tehran Children"...

..." yes, the war of the elders of Tehran, ten years old, and the war of the elders of Kazakhstan, six years old, all the elders of the battles between Siberia and Polesie the little elders, persecuted by fire..."

The "Tehran Children" were quickly absorbed in Israel and overcame the gap in their education, the loss of four significant years, during which instead of studying, they struggled for their life. They did grow up, raised new families, and overcame the bereavement, the sad memories, and the hardship. They completed their studies and slowly their faith in humanity was restored. They all became very positive and contributing citizens of Israel, active in all realms of the Israeli society, economy, and army.

But 35 did not grow old. Thirty-five of the children fell in battles during the wars of Israel, mainly the Independence War in 1948, sacrificing their lives for the freedom of the new State of Israel. Those 35 young brave boys and girls were commemorated in the book by Meir Ohad, Yizkor the Tehran Children, published by the Public Commission to Commemorate the "Tehran Children", Tel Aviv, 1979. Details (in Hebrew) about each combatant, his biography, the date and place of his death, and his burial place are in the Israeli Ministry of Defense website: http://www.izkor.gov.il.

Book : Children of Zion (1994; ET 1998), by Henryk Grynberg

• Henryk Grynberg, Dzieci Syjonu <Polish> (Warszawa: Karta, 1994). Hebrew ed. Dzieci Syjonu, The Children of Zion, The Path of Agony of the "Tehran Children" (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1995). English ed. Children of Zion (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998).

The book is based on 73 testimonies – "Protocols" – taken and registered from the children immediately after their arrival to the Promised Land. The protocols of the children's testimonies are in the archives of the Hoover Institution, Documentation Box 197, Folders 1-4, Polish Information Center - Jerusalem, at Stanford University, in the collection "Poland - Ministry of Information and reports of Jewish Deportees." They were the basis of Grynberg's book, which enfolds the historical events of this less explored chapter of the Holocaust through the eyes of the little Jewish refugees from Poland and their struggle for survival in the Soviet Union ... The escape of the children from Poland saved them from the clutches of the Nazi extermination machine, yet exposed them to the cruel fate of helpless refugees, fighting all sorts of hardship: diseases of many kinds, incomprehensible hunger, cold, forced labor and confinement to an orphanage. These events are less documented in history books, and in this respect the "Children of Zion" contributes, through the testimonies of the individual child, to the general review of history.

"In Children of Zion, Henryk Grynberg takes an extraordinary collection of interviews conducted by representatives of the Polish government-in-exile in Palestine in 1943 and arranges them in such a way that their voices become unforgettable. The interviewees--all Polish children--tell of their wartime experiences. Rather than using traditional form, Grynberg has turned their voices into a large "choral" group. The children recall their lives before the war (most were well off), their memories of the war's outbreak and the arrival of the Germans and Russians, and their experiences after leaving work camps and the ways many coped with their lives as orphans."--Publisher description.

• (31) ?? Eliezer Haltman (15) from Izbica

• (36) ?? Cywia Elsan (15, 1927?) + Nisan (12, 1931)

• (37) Ida, Bela, Abram & Hersz Potasz (FFMM / Poland, 1928 1930, 1932, 1935), Holocaust survisors

Ida Potasz / Judyta Patasz]] (15) with sister and 2 brothers

Born in Goworowo, Poland. Children of Fiszel and Chaja. Arrived in Israel on February 18, 1943.

• (40) ?? Chaim Dawid Cwibel (16)

• (50) Josef Hurwicz () with brother Mojsze

[[Josef & Moniek Horowicz (MM / Poland, 1928, 1932), Holocaust

Born in Wieliczka (near Krakow), Poland. Children of Ozjasz (Jehoszua) and Sara.

• (53) Mordechaj Szmulewicz

Motek Szmulewicz (M / Poland, 1928), Holocaust survivor

Born in Lodz, Poland. Son of Israel and Adela. Arrived in Israel on February 18, 1943.

• (65) Josef Rozenberg (15)

Hersz, Jozef, Lea & Mosze Rosenberg (MMFM / Poland, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932), Holocaust survivors

Born in Krzeszow (near Lublin), Poland. Children of Nachemi and Rachel. Arrived in Israel on February 18, 1943.

• (74) Nachum Teper = Manes 1926? (15)

Fajga, Jozef, Markus & Bajla Teper (FMMF / Poland, 1928, 1930, 1932, 1937), Holocaust survivors

Born in Narol (near Lwow?), Poland. Children of Samuel and Regina. Arrived in Israel on February 18, 1943.

• (79) Boruch Flamenbaum

Boruch Flamenbaum (M / Poland, 1929), Holocaust survivor

Born in Bilgoraj, Poland. Son of Abram (Abraham) and Sara. Arrived in Israel on February 18, 1943.

• (83) Szymon Turner (13)

[[Szymon Turner (M / Poland, 1929),

Born in Mszana Dolna (Osiany Dolne), Poland. Son of Izak (Icchak) and lea. Arrived in Israel on February 18, 1943.

• (102) David Auschibel ? (14) or Berta Anzubel (b.1927) ?

• (107) Jeschoszua Frydman (16)

• (108) Josef Barten (14)

[[Josef Barten (M / Poland, 1929)

Born in Majdan Klobuszewski, Poland. Son of Wolf and Rywka (Rebeka).

• (109) Izreal Ferster (15) Arrived with two sisters ?

Or Fenster?

• (110) Dina Stahl (Sztark) (11) Dina Rabka

[[Dina Stahl (F / Poland, 1932)

Born in Rabka, Poland. Daughter of Josef and Ester.

• (111) Lunia Akerman (13) with brother (8)

Leonia & Jankiel Akerman (FM / Poland, 1930, 1935), Holocaust survivors

• 112. Sima Siebcesser (13)

Syma Zybcener (M / Poland, 1930), Holocaust survivor

Born in Tarnowka (near Lancut), Poland. Son of Mendel and Rajzel.

• 113. Eliezer Hochmeister (15)

Eliezer Hochmeister (M / Poland, 1928), Holocaust survivor

Born in Warsaw, Poland. Son of Dawid and Noami (Noemi). Arrived in Israel in 1943.

• 114. Eliezer Kreitner (13)

• 115. Luba Milgram (12)

Minia, Luba, Chaja & Szajndla Milgrom (Poland, 1929, 1931, 1936, 1938), Holocaust survivors

Born in Kaluszyn, Poland. Children of Jozef and Estera. Arrived in Palestine on February 18, 1943.

Luba was interviewed in Palestine in 1943.

• 116. Mojsze Lipowicz (11)

Felicja, Maria & Monek Lipowicz (FFM / Poland, 1929, 1931, 1933), Holocaust survivors

Born in Pultusk, Poland. Children of Selik and Roza (Rojza). Arrived in Palestine on February 18, 1943.

Maria (#136) and Monek (Mojsze, #116)) were interviewed in Palestine in 1943.

• 117. Chaim Cymerman (13) with his sister

Chaim & Malka Cymerman (MF / Poland, 1930, 1932), Holocaust survivors

Born in Hrubieszow, Poland. Children of Michal (Nacha) and Perla (Ita). Arrived in Palestine on February 18, 1943.

Chaim (#117)) was interviewed in Palestine in 1943.

• 118. Sara Mlawer (12) with her brother.

Zelek & Sara Mlawer (M / Poland, 1930, 1932), Holocaust survivors

Born in Przasnysz, Poland. Children of Michal (Michel) and Rywka (Frejda). Arrived in Palestine on February 18, 1943.

Sara (#118)) was interviewed in Palestine in 1943.

• 254 Miriam Koldra

Miriam, Szyja, Pessa, Josek & Szulim Koldra (FFFMM / Poland, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1935), Holocaust survivors

Born in Warsaw, Poland. Children of Szyja. Arrived in Palestine in August 1943.

Miriam (#254)) was interviewed in Palestine in 1943.

Book : Tehran Children (2019), by Mikhal Dekel

• Mikhal Dekel. Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019).

"Fleeing East from Nazi terror, over a million Polish Jews traversed the Soviet Union, many finding refuge in Muslim lands. Their story―the extraordinary saga of two-thirds of Polish Jewish survivors―has never been fully told ... Author Mikhal Dekel’s father, Hannan Teitel, and her aunt Regina were two of these refugees. After they fled the town in eastern Poland where their family had been successful brewers for centuries, they endured extreme suffering in the Soviet forced labor camps known as “special settlements.” Then came a journey during which tens of thousands died of starvation and disease en route to the Soviet Central Asian Republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. While American organizations negotiated to deliver aid to the hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews who remained there, Dekel’s father and aunt were two of nearly one thousand refugee children who were evacuated to Iran, where they were embraced by an ancient Persian-Jewish community. Months later, their Zionist caregivers escorted them via India to Mandatory Palestine, where, at the endpoint of their thirteen-thousand-mile journey, they joined hundreds of thousands of refugees (including over one hundred thousand Polish Catholics). The arrival of the “Tehran Children” was far from straightforward, as religious and secular parties vied over their futures in what would soon be Israel ... Beginning with the death of the inscrutable Tehran Child who was her father, Dekel fuses memoir with extensive archival research to recover this astonishing story, with the help of travel companions and interlocutors including an Iranian colleague, a Polish PiS politician, a Russian oligarch, and an Uzbek descendent of Korean deportees. The history she uncovers is one of the worst and the best of humanity. The experiences her father and aunt endured, along with so many others, ultimately reshaped and redefined their lives and identities and those of other refugees and rescuers, profoundly and permanently, during and after the war ... With literary grace, Tehran Children presents a unique narrative of the Holocaust, whose focus is not the concentration camp, but the refugee, and whose center is not Europe, but Central Asia and the Middle East. 10 illustrations"--Publisher description.

Book : A Train to Palestine (2020), by Randy Grigsby

• Randy Grigsby, A Train to Palestine: The Tehran Children, Anders' Army and their Escape from Stalin's Siberia, 1939–1943

"In October 1938, eight-year-old Josef Rosenbaum, his mother, and his younger sister set out from Germany on a cruel odyssey, fleeing into eastern Europe along with thousands of other refugees. Sent to Siberian slave labor camps in the wildernesses, they suffered brutal cold, famine, and disease. When Germany invaded Russia many refugees were forced out of Siberia to primitive tent camps in Uzbekistan, accompanied by the Polish army-in-exile previously imprisoned by the Soviets. Within weeks the commander of the army, General Wladyslaw Anders, received orders to relocate his army to Iran to train to fight alongside the British in North Africa. Instructed to leave without the civilians, Anders instead ordered all evacuees, including Jews, to head southward with his troops. Joe and the refugees were again loaded on trains, accompanied by the Polish soldiers, and sent to the port of Pahlavi on the Caspian Sea. Then, transported by trucks over treacherous mountain roads, they finally arrived in Tehran, where they struggled to survive in horrifying conditions. In October 1942, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem accepted responsibility for the nine hundred orphaned Jewish children in the camp, and by January 1943, the agency secured travel certificates for the Tehran Children to evacuate to Palestine. Joe and the other children, after five terrible years, finally reached safety at the Athlit Detention Camp, north of Haifa, on 18 February 1943. Readers will find the story is one of the swift brutalities of war, and the suffering of civilians swept up in the maelstrom of fierce conflict. A Train to Palestine recreates a remarkable, and little-known story of escape and survival during the Second World War."--Publisher description.

Names of Tehran Children

• Leonia & Jankiel Akerman (FM / Poland, 1930, 1935), Holocaust survivors (111)

Born in Warsaw, Poland. Children of Mejer and Helena. Father had a clothing shop in Wolowa St. Warsaw.

• Ida Bauminger (F / Poland, 1931), Holocaust survivor (163)

Born in Krakow, Poland. Daughter of Chaskiel and Bronia.

• Tola, Fryda & Marta (FFF / Poland, 1930, 1932, 1933), Holocaust survivors (122)

Born in Warszawa, Poland. Children of Mosze and Nomi.

• Chaim & Malka Cymerman (MF / Poland. 1930, 1932), Holocaust survivors (117)

Born in Hrubieszow, Poland. Children of Michael and Perla.

• Israel, Bajla & Roza Fenster (MFF / Poland, 1928, 1930, 1935), Holocaust survivors (Ferster, 108).

Born in Majdan Klobuszewski, Poland. Children of Symcha and Gitla. Arrived in Israel in August 1943.

Eli Melech, Batya Shahar (Karola Felsen, name before the war), Halina Montag (Hadassah Montag), Chibi (Tzvi Achtenberg), Hadassah Lampel, Gabrila Knoebel (Gavriella Knoebel), Miriam Goldstein, Unidentified boy, and Michal Galina.

• [[Halina Montag (F / Poland, 1928),

Born in Jaroslaw, Poland. Daughter of Chaim and Hania.

• Hadassah Lampel, the daughter of Moshe and Rosa, was born in a little Polish town called Nowy Sacz, in the foothills of the Beskid Mountains, on February 12, 1929. The family found temporary refuge in the Soviet Union. They were sent to Siberia to forced labor. She arrived in Israel among the Tehran children. She lived in the Kibbutz Givat Brenner. She died in 1948 in the Independence War.

• [[Abram & Miriam Goldsztein (MF / Poland, 1927, 1930)

Born in Zbaraz and Luck, Poland. Children of Lipa and Estera. Arrive in Israel in February 1943.

Chanania & Regina Teitel (MF / Poland, 1927, 1931), Holocaust survivors

Chanania Teitel / Hannan Dekel (M / Poland, 1927-1993)

Regina Teitel / Rivka Dekel (F / Poland, 1931) ]]

Noemi Perelgric (F / Poland, 1932)

Mikhal Dekel, daughter of Hannah wrote a book.

Yehuda Zerzy Singer (M / Poland, 1928)

Biography

Yehuda Zerzy Singer was born in Kraków, Poland in 1928 and immigrated to Palestine in February 1943 with the "Tehran Children," a group of children and Holocaust survivors brought to the country by the Jewish Agency after staying in a camp arranged for them in Tehran, Iran. After arriving in Palestine, Yehuda was sent with a group of children to Kibbutz Ein Harod.

The Yehuda Zerzy Singer papers contain a handwritten diary, photographs, and documents relating to Yehuda Zerzy Singer’s experiences in Poland and Russia during World War II and his life in Palestine after his arrival with the "Teheran Children." The collection includes school certificates, a postcard, identification cards, and photographs of Yehuda in Kibbutz Ein Harod.

The diary was written, in Polish, by Yehuda from September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Nazi Germany into Poland, until the beginning of 1942, about one year prior to his arrival in Palestine. The diary documents the occupation of Poland; the plans of the family to escape to the east and the trip of the family to Lviv; the recruitment of his father to the army; the occupation of Lviv by the Russians; receipt of a letter announcing that his father was taken prisoner; his mother's work in sawing trees and his brother's work as a guard; and a trip by train and meeting new friends on his way to Tehran.

Salomon Wagner / Shlomo Vagner (1929-1948), born in Nisko, Poland, one of the Tehran Children (a group of Polish Jewish children, mainly orphans, who escaped the Nazi German occupation of Poland, found temporary refuge in the Soviet Union, and was later evacuated to Tehran, Iran, before finally reaching Eretz Israel in 1943), was killed during Israel War of Independence.

---

Not part of the group but with a similar experience:

Eliahu Eilam Kimel, born on July 30, 1934 in Galicia, Poland, discusses his childhood; his parents Avraham and Regina (Rivka), who were both in the photography business; their non-Jewish neighbors; his father being a Zionist while his mother did not want to go to Palestine; having a large extended family of 100 members, of whom six survived; the Germans occupying his town; his father being beaten by a German, after which his family fled east to Lvov (L’viv, Ukraine) to relatives; his father making money by taking photographs for IDs; traveling east by train for three weeks without getting off and arriving in Ozero, Siberia; living there from 1939 until June 1941; his father working in the forest; being liberated in June 1941 but ordered to stay in the Soviet Union; going to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then to Seragana, where they stayed for one year; having little food since fields were used to grow cotton for uniforms; not attending school and being taught how to read by a cousin; his father joining General Anders’ Polish Army in 1941; moving with his mother and aunt to a town near the army base; his mother getting ill, being pronounced dead in a hospital, and then revived by a doctor; his father being sent with the army to the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy, for which King George gave Avraham a medal; going with his mother and aunt to a port on the Caspian Sea; fainting on the pier as he tried to get on a boat after stepping on a dead child; sitting on wooden benches on the tanker without getting up for 36 hours; arriving on the shore of Pahlavi, Iran, and then going to Teheran; his mother being taken to a hospital while he stayed with his aunt in a barrack for Jews; not being a part of the “Teheran Children” who stayed in an orphanage but being saved by them when he was being pushed into a waste ditch; staying for 18 months; attending school; leaving with his mother by boat to Suez; crossing the desert by train and going to Atlit in Palestine then to Jerusalem; attending high school; being in the Israeli Army from 1954 to 1957; studying engineering in the Technion in Haifa; getting married and having three sons; and still suffering from the trauma of his childhood.

Not part of the group:

Serge Klarsfeld (born 17 September 1935) is a French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the records to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Serge Klarsfeld was born in Bucharest to a family of Romanian Jews. They migrated to France before the Second World War began. In 1943, his father was arrested by the SS in Nice during a roundup ordered by Alois Brunner. Deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, Klarsfeld's father died there. Young Serge was cared for in a home for Jewish children operated by the OSE (Œuvre de secours aux enfants) organization; his mother and sister also survived the war in Vichy France, helped by the underground French Resistance beginning in late 1943. Since the 1960s, he has made notable efforts to commemorate the Jewish victims of German-occupied France and has been a supporter of Israel. He helped found and have led the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France (Association des fils et filles des déportés juifs de France) or FFDJF. It is one of the groups that has documented cases and located former German and French officials for prosecution such as Klaus Barbie, René Bousquet, Jean Leguay, Maurice Papon and Paul Touvier, who have been implicated in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of French and foreign Jews during the Second World War. The Klarsfelds were among organized groups who filed cases decades after the war, sometimes as late as the 1990s, against such officials for their crimes against humanity. In the years before 1989 and the break-up of the Soviet Union, the Klarsfelds (Serge Klarsfeld and his wife Beate) frequently protested against the Eastern Bloc's support for the PLO and anti-Zionism. Recognition for their work has included France's Legion of Honor in 1984. In 1986, their story was adapted as an American television film starring Tom Conti, Farrah Fawcett and Geraldine Page. In 2008, a French television movie was made about them. On 1 January 2014, the Klarsfelds' Legion of Honor ranks were upgraded: Serge became Grand officer. On 26 October 2015, the UNESCO designate the Klarsfelds as "Honorary Ambassadors and Special Envoys for Education about the Holocaust and the Prevention of Genocide." Source: Online-Wikipedia

Not part of the group:

Rifka Glatz (née Muscovitz), born on October 26, 1937 in Debrecen, Hungary, describes moving to Cluj when she was in kindergarten; her father’s transport to a work camp in the early 1940s; being rounded-up with her mother and her brother in early spring of 1944; being taken to Budapest, Hungary, where they were kept in a synagogue; contracting the chicken pox but keeping it a secret; her and her family’s transport to Bergen-Belsen, of which she remembers little because of her young age; staying at Bergen-Belsen for eight months; being part of a group that was given their freedom by Rudolf Kasztner, who gave money and jewels to Eichmann; and recovering in Switzerland until her immigration to Palestine as part of the first legal Aliyah.

External links

• USHMM Encyclopedia]

• List of the Children