Category:Holocaust Refugee Children, United States (subject)

Holocaust Refugee Children, United States

Overview

After Hitler's rise to power, concerned American Jewish groups founded German Jewish Children’s Aid (GJCA) in April 1934, an organization dedicated to coordinating the immigration of unaccompanied German Jewish children (sixteen or younger) to the United States. By July 1939, GJCA brought 414 children to the United States, though their efforts were constantly hampered by a lack of adequate funding and the difficulty of finding suitable foster homes.

After Kristallnacht, Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus went to Vienna in the spring 1939 and succeeded in bringing 50 children to the United States. See Kraus Rescue Mission.

Small groups of Jewish children from Britain, France, Spain and Portugal arrived in the United States during the war; for example, twenty-two Children of La Hille.

Other children arrived with their own families.

It is estimated that a total of at least 1,400 refugee children came to the United States during the Nazi era.

A large number of refugees arrived in the United States in 1944 at Fort Ontario.

External links

• USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia (The Immigration of Refugee Children to the United States)