Oeuvre de secours aux enfants

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Young liberated Jewish children leaning out of the windows of a train coming from the Buchenwald concentration camp . The train marked "Hitler kapout" transported the children to an OSE home in Écouis , France .

The non-profit organization Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) was founded on August 7, 1912 in Saint Petersburg by doctors to protect sick Jewish children and soon had branches in many European countries. In 1921 it was banned in Russia because it did not want to subordinate itself to a state Jewish umbrella organization and therefore withdrew from it. In 1923 the organization was based in Berlin under the honorary chairmanship of Albert Einstein . With the transfer of power to the National Socialists in 1933, their headquarters were moved to Paris .

After the German occupation of northern France, the headquarters were relocated to Vichy-France in 1940 and then to Geneva in Switzerland in 1943 . Since 1950 the head office has been back in Paris.

Sister organizations of the OSE are the Jewish Society for Craft and Agricultural Work Organization, Reconstruction, Travail (ORT), founded in St. Petersburg in 1880 , and the important American aid organization American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee , or Joint for short.

Surname

The organization was originally founded with the name ( Russian :) "Obshchestvo okhraneniia zdorov'ia evreiskogo naseleniia" and soon renamed "Obščestvo Zdravoochranenija Evreev" ("OZE" - Organization for the Protection of the Health of Jews).

The current abbreviation of the name is derived from the description of the activities of the organization Œuvre de secours aux enfants (for example: "Children's Fund" or "Children's Aid Society"). At the same time, “OSE” is an acronym , since the organization pronounces the abbreviation “OSE” as in “osè” ( French: “oser” - dare to have confidence ).

Tasks before and during the Second World War

UGIF (L'Union générale des israélites de France), 1942.

After the German occupation of France, the French branch of the OSE was integrated into the "Union générale des israélites de France". It became the third health organization of the UGIF. It thus became the most important organization for the rescue of Jewish children in France.

Until 1933, the German branch of the OZE led a relatively normal club life. B. On February 12, 1927, there was a charity ball in the Logenhaus Berlin for the benefit of his activities; Lectures were offered in Russian (e.g. The Fight Against Tuberculosis or The OZE and the Tasks of Jewish Health Care , both in 1927).

On November 11, 1922, the OZE celebrated the 10th anniversary of the organization in the Logenhaus Berlin. There were lectures by the co-founder in Russia, Moisei M. Gran: "10 Years OZE" and by Philipp Maksovič Bljumental ': "Evrejstvo pered licom boleznej i smerti" (= Judaism in the face of illness and death), and a concert . On August 27, 1923, OZE held a "First World Conference on Jewish Healthcare " in Berlin .

Due to the political repression in Germany and Austria , OSE looked after many Jewish children in France who had to flee from Germany and Austria. In the spring of 1942 there were 1,349 children in OSE houses. Under the significant responsibility of the Russian-French psychiatrist and philosopher Eugène Minkowski , 311 of these children were sent to the USA via Lisbon .

From April 1943 to 1944, children were “smuggled” in Switzerland in order to protect particularly vulnerable children. Children were placed in homes of friendly aid organizations or with private individuals. OSE was also significantly involved in the “ Night of Vénissieux ” in August 1942 , during which 108 children were rescued from the detention camp.

It is estimated that OSE saved a total of around 5000 children from the Nazis .

The Reich Main Security Office considered OSE to be a hostile organization for the purpose of taking measures against Jews in the "Altreich" , especially since it had a local group in Berlin and one in Danzig until the Germans marched in .

Tasks after the Second World War

After the war, children and young people were also cared for as survivors from the concentration camps , as underage displaced persons , or as orphans of Jewish parents. For example, OSE organized their emigration to Israel, often together with other charitable organizations. In the 1960s, children from Egypt and North Africa were cared for. Today OSE looks after sick and disabled children.

Employee

Jean-François Guthmann has been President of OSE since 2003, and Patricia Sitruk is Managing Director. The OSE has around 650 employees and 100 volunteer supporters.

Historically, the immunologist Alexandre Besredka, a doctor of Russian descent in Paris, played an important role in the OSE of the interwar period.

List of OSE children's homes during the Second World War (selection)

The Château de Chabannes was an OSE children's home in Chabannes ( Saint-Pierre-de-Fursac ) in Vichy-France, in which around 400 Jewish refugee children were saved from the Holocaust by the director at the time, Félix Chevrier and the teaching staff. 1999 recorded and documented in the documentary " The Children of Chabannes " by Lisa Gossels and Dean Wetherell (soundtrack by Patrice Mestral ).

During the Second World War , many of the OSE children's homes were in abandoned castles and villas (examples):

literature

  • Michèle Becquemin: Une institution juive dans la République, l'Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants: pour une histoire du service social et de la protection de l'enfance . Ed. Pétra, Paris 2013 ISBN 978-2-84743-058-5
  • Laura Hobson Faure: L'œuvre de secours aux enfants et les populations juives au XXe siècle: prévenir et guérir dans un siècle de violences . Colin, Paris 2014 ISBN 978-2-200-28546-3
  • Katy Hazan: Le sauvetage des enfants juifs pendant l'Occupation, dans les maisons de l'OSE, 1938 - 1945 - Rescuing Jewish children during the Nazi occupation: OSE children's homes, 1938 - 1945 . Somogy Ed. d'Art, Paris 2008 ISBN 978-2-7572-0219-7
  • Fanny Ben-Ami: Le journal de Fanny. From the Ivrit by Benjamin Ben-Ami. Livre de Poche Jeunesse. Hachette, Paris 2015 ISBN 2012490131
  • Marion Feldman, Katy Hazan: Histoires secrètes. Les enfants juifs et l'Assistance publique . In Press, 2017
  • Charles Waserscztajn: Sauvé d'Auschwitz par l'assistance publique. (Contemporary witness, himself an enfant caché) éd. du Cercil, 2016
  • Bjuleten fun ṣenṭral-bjuro fun der Gezelšafṭ ṣu farhiṭn di gezundhajt fun der idišer bafelqerung, Oze (in Yiddish ) (= Bulletin of the Central Office of the Society for the Preservation of Health for the Jewish Population, OZE). Publishing place Berlin
  • Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews: Les enfants de Buchenwald. Union OSE, Geneva 1947
  • Periodical: Ose-Rundschau: Journal of the Society for the Protection of Health of the Jews "Ose" eV (The Ose Review). Ed. Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews. Publishing house Ose-Rundschau, Berlin. Covered issues 1926 - 1933

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe - OZE .
  2. ↑ p. 63 Börries Kuzmany, The Soviet Power and the Construction of a Secular Jewish Nation 1917 - 1922 , Master's thesis University of Vienna 2003
  3. ↑ The aim of the ORT was to provide commercial and technical vocational training and schools to give impoverished Jews a start.
  4. ^ Jacques Picard: Organization Reconstruction Travail (ORT). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . May 6, 2010 , accessed June 7, 2019 .
  5. ^ Society for the Promotion of the Health of the Jewish Population
  6. ^ Gérard Foussier, Hidden Children in Documents / Documents, Journal for the Franco-German Dialogue, 1/2016, p. 37
  7. ↑ Brief portrait
  8. ↑ Rescuing the Children. Europe and the Holocaust ( Memento of the original from January 27, 2019 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , on ZDF info , May 10, 2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zdf.de
  9. ↑ Another example: On December 14, 1922 in Berlin, OZE lecture by FZ Šneerson: "Medical Education and the Fate of the Jewish Adolescent Generation", in Yiddish. Fischl Schneersohn was a doctor, psychologist and writer, under this name the novel "Grenadierstrasse" appeared in German translation in 2012.
  10. ↑ to Blumental ': online
  11. ↑ as the "Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews"; Reference to some archival documents of the RSHA on OSE
  12. ↑ On this in detail Simone Gigliotti, Monica Tempian Ed .: The young victims of the Nazi regime. Migration, the Holocaust and postwar displacement . Bloomsbury Academic, London 2016, passim (see register)
  13. ↑ Gérard Foussier: Hidden Children in Documents / Documents, Journal for the Franco-German Dialogue, 1/2016, p. 37
  14. ^ Source , OSE-Paris, archive. His years of life were 1870-1940
  15. ↑ The list of OSE children's homes in France during World War II ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
  16. ↑ French website of Yad Vashem or English website with many photos and a detailed history.
  17. ↑ Historical picture of the building, brief description , USHMM . There are more photos from here in the inventory, e.g. B. Children's groups
  18. ↑ Known as the last legal residence of Adele Kurzweil from Graz , known from a novel by Manfred Theisen , 2009. The Theodor Kramer Society Vienna has a photo of Adele with another girl, Dorli Löbl, at the dodgeball game in Les Tourelles in 1939. The picture served as the background for a lecture by Vera Freud on November 15, 2014 in Vienna.
  19. ↑ CHILDREN'S HOMES IN FRANCE DURING THE HOLOCAUST: Chamonix
  20. ^ A contemporary witness who managed to escape from France to Switzerland with the help of the OSE at the age of 13 in a group of 8 children. Also filmed.