Swiss aid organization for émigré children

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The Swiss Aid Organization for Emigrant Children (SHEK) was a politically and religiously neutral aid organization founded in Zurich in 1933 to support refugee children, which existed until 1947. The relatively small aid organization played a central role in helping refugees.

Organization and collaboration

The SHEK emerged from the Swiss section of the Comité d'aide aux enfants des émigrés allemands , active in Paris, which supported a children's home in Paris. It was founded by Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein in October 1933 and managed until it was dissolved in 1947. In 1935, the SHEK broke away from the Paris Comité and became the umbrella organization of an independent Swiss aid organization with local sections, such as the Basler Aid for Emigrant Children (BHEK) founded by Georgine Gerhard in 1934 .

Several humanitarian aid organizations were founded by committed women in the interwar period . There was close cooperation with the Swiss Workers' Child Aid, founded in 1932 under the direction of Regina Kägi-Fuchsmann . When SHEK started organizing children's trains for the children of emigrants from Paris , Kägi-Fuchsmann looked for the necessary vacation spots in holiday homes and for the younger children with foster families in Switzerland. SHEK joined the Swiss Working Group for Spanish Children (SAS) as one of 14 aid organizations in 1937 , but limited itself to financial contributions.

The expansion of the war misery ( Spain , Finland , Poland ) and the increase in the flow of refugees led in the spring of 1940 to the amalgamation of 17 denominational and politically diverse aid organizations, including the SAS, under the umbrella organization Swiss Working Group for War Damaged Children (SAK) .

In 1942 the SAK became the Children's Aid of the Swiss Red Cross , which was financially supported from 1944 to 1948 by the Swiss donation , a public collection of the Swiss people with the aim of providing humanitarian aid and reconstruction aid in eighteen war-damaged countries in Europe . As a member of the FDJP's expert commission for refugee issues set up in 1944, Sutro and SHEK made a major contribution to the cooperation between the individual aid organizations.

Children's trains to Switzerland 1934–1939

The SHEK brought children of German parents who had emigrated to France on children's trains from France to Switzerland and organized two to three-month stays in Switzerland for around 5000 Jewish children from 1934 to 1939.

The first children's train ran on April 14, 1934. In 1934 there were 122 children, and 543 in the following year. By the beginning of the war in 1939, the SHEK was able to arrange holiday stays of 6 to 12 weeks in Switzerland for 4,892 emigrant children, of which 2,574 were from Germany and 2,318 from Russia. The board member of the Basel SHEK Mathilde Paravicini 1934–1939 was responsible for the organization of the children's trains of the SHEK . She worked with Georgine Gerhard, the founder of the Basel SHEK.

300 children campaign

In November 1938 Georgine Gerhard and Nettie Sutro succeeded in obtaining a special permit for the entry of 300 Jewish children from Frankfurt (Main) as well as Constance and other communities in southern Baden ("300 children campaign"). Because the Second World War broke out, the children could not stay in Switzerland for six months as planned, but for six years, which was life-saving for them.

Childcare in Switzerland 1940–1947

After joining the SAK in January 1940, the SHEK concentrated on looking after the refugee children in Switzerland and left the activities outside of Switzerland, including the children's trains, to the SAK. Between 1939 and 1948, SHEK took on responsibility for the care of around 5,000, mostly Jewish, refugee children who had entered Switzerland illegally.

Thanks to its networking with other refugee associations and with the SRK Kinderhilfe (from 1942) and thanks to its proclaimed neutrality, the Federal Council transferred responsibility for the single refugee children up to 16 years of age to the SHEK on December 1, 1942. It was commissioned by the police department of the FDJP to look for sponsored families for the refugee children interned in Swiss camps, the so-called camp liberation of school children from the reception camps. The SHEK volunteers took the children to foster families or children's homes and looked after them throughout their stay in Switzerland. Whenever possible, attempts were made to place Jewish children with Jewish foster families. Attempts were made to secure a solid education and apprenticeship for the young people in order to equip them for their return home after the war.

SHEK ran its own homes and in 1944 created a central home commission, which was chaired by Georgine Gerhard. After the end of the war, attempts were made to find living relatives or a new destination or home country for the children. SHEK volunteers traveled with the children to the destination countries to ensure that they were well housed. They stayed in correspondence with the children later on and made visits to their home countries.

When the SHEK was dissolved at the end of 1947, 601 protégés were still in his care. Sutro and a small team continued to run SHEK until the end of 1948 and, as a historian, organized the entire archive from 1933 to 1947. In 1951, SHEK employees founded the non-denominational children's village Kirjath Jearim for the disadvantaged in Palestine.

Neutrality and politics

The officially apolitical stance in the sense of the principle of neutrality of the Red Cross secured the SHEK both the goodwill of the authorities, as in the case of the 300 children campaign, as well as donations from all political camps of the Swiss population.

SHEK women made numerous political initiatives to improve the lot of the refugees. Georgine Gerhard in particular made use of her international network with women from Quaker circles and also presented herself to the Federal Council, to delegates of the League of Nations or to the head of the Federal Aliens Police, Heinrich Rothmund , to stand up for the refugees and especially the refugee children

Although the neutral SHEK wanted to help all children without denominational, social and political differences, of the children who were admitted to Switzerland between 1934 and 1939, more than eighty percent were Jewish, because the German emigration in France consisted largely of Jewish refugees.

The women of SHEK looked after these children with charitable help and maternal love. They did not care about political programs, but worked together with all those willing to help and provided suitable recreational and vacation spots for their protégés.

In her book Jugend auf der Flucht 1933–1948 , published in 1952 , Nettie Sutro recorded her memories as co-founder and director of SHEK, which were then incorporated into the 1957 Ludwig report .

literature

  • Nettie Sutro-Katzenstein: Youth on the run, 1933–1948. 15 years in the mirror of the Swiss Aid Organization for Emigrant Children. With a foreword by Albert Schweitzer . Europa-Verlag, Zurich 1952.
  • Carl Ludwig: Switzerland's refugee policy from 1933 to the present. Report to the Federal Council from 1957.
  • Liselotte Hilb: A life for refugee children. Memories of Dr. Nettie Sutro. Neue Zürcher Zeitung from November 1, 1989.
  • Antonia Schmidlin: Another Switzerland. Helpers, children of war and humanitarian policy 1933–1942. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 1999, ISBN 3-905313-04-9 .
  • Sara Kadosh: Jewish Refugee Children in Switzerland 1939–1950. In: Elisabeth Maxwell and John K. Roth (eds.): Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide. London 2001.
  • Ildikó Kovács: Swiss aid organization for émigré children. Nettie Sutro. Citizen's wife, historian and escape assistant . In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2010, ISBN 3-7965-2695-0 .
  • Hans-Hermann Seiffert: My beloved children. The letters of the Konstanz Jewess Hella Schwarzhaupt from internment in Gurs and Récébédou to her children . Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz 2013, ISBN 3-86628-486-1 (The two younger children of the Schwarzhaupt family were able to survive thanks to the 300-child campaign)
  • Salome Lienert: We want to help where there is need. The Swiss Aid Organization for Emigrant Children 1933–1947 . Chronos Verlag: Zürich 2013, ISBN 978-3-0340-1157-0 review

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Independent Expert Commission Switzerland (UEK) - Second World War: Switzerland and the refugees at the time of National Socialism , Zurich 2001, p. 85
  2. ↑ Urs Knoblauch: Switzerland as the guardian of the humanitarian tradition. For the exhibition Humanitarian Switzerland 1933–1945. Children on the run , at the University of Bern, 2004
  3. ^ Ildikó Kovács: Netti Sutro. Citizen's wife, historian and escape assistant . In: Ildikó Kovács: Nettie Sutro. Swiss aid organization for émigré children . In: Helena Kanyar Becker (ed.): Forgotten women. Humanitarian aid to children and official refugee policy 1917–1948.