Category:SS Mouzinho (subject)

SS Mouzinho (sse Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

111 children, released from French internment camps, such as Gurs and Rivesaltes, obtained permission in 1941 to emigrate to the United States.

The children left the Marseilles train station at the end of May 1941. They were accompanied by OSE workers Isaac and Masha Chomski, who coordinated the transport with the assistance of Morris Troper of the JDC as well as the American Friends Service Committee. The train stopped briefly at the Oloron train station, located outside the Gurs concentration camp, so that the children could say a final goodbye to their parents. The children had saved their morning food rations and presented them to their parents as a gift, to the amazement of all the adults present. The brief reunion was traumatic for both the children and the parents, and OSE decided to discontinue the practice on future convoys.

From France, the children traveled to Portugal by way of Spain. In Lisbon they boarded the SS Mouzinho which sailed on June 10, 1941. They arrived in New York on June 21, 1941.

Two uniformed Portuguese policemen stand on the pier in the port of Lisbon as a group of Jewish refugee children wait in line to board the SS Mouzinho. The young boy just to the right of center in the image, looking back over his right shoulder, is Herman Rosenfeld, born 27 April 1933 in Adelheim, Germany. The young blonde girl standing next to the two police officers is wearing tag #25, can be identified as Lilian Warschawski (or Warszawski), born 20 April 1930 in Belgium.