Group portrait of German-Jewish refugee children who were sent to France on a Kindertransport in the spring of 1939 on the steps of the Quincy-sous-Senart children's home near Paris.
Overview
- Caption
- Group portrait of German-Jewish refugee children who were sent to France on a Kindertransport in the spring of 1939 on the steps of the Quincy-sous-Senart children's home near Paris.
Among those pictured are Arno Marcuse (front row, left), Norbert Bikales (second row, left), Wolfgang Blumenreich (second row, third from left), Gerhard Alexander (second row, second from right), Gerhard Glass (second row, far right), Eric Goldfarb (back row, second from left), Walter Herzig (back row, center), Heinz Stephan Lewy (top row, second from the right) and Gerhard Rosenzweig (top row, far right). - Date
-
1939 - 1940
- Locale
- Quincy-sous-Senart, [Essonne] France
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Stephan H. Lewy
- Event History
- The château at Quincy-sous-Sénart, located 30 km. southeast of Paris, belonged to the Count Hubert de Monbrison before World War II. He and the Princess Irena Paley (a niece of the last Russian czar who later became his wife), used the château to house refugee girls from the Russian and Spanish civil wars. In 1939 de Monbrison was approached by his children's Jewish physician, who was a member of the board of the OSE, and asked whether he would take in a group of forty German Jewish refugee children. The count agreed and the Kindertransport of boys arrived on July 4, 1939. Quincy served as a Jewish children's home until September 1940 when, following the German occupation of France, the château was requisitioned by the German army. The boys were then relocated to other OSE homes.
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10006126.
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Stephan H. LewySource Record ID: OSE Conference
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Heinz Stephan Lewy was born in Berlin on March 11, 1925. He was the only child of Arthur and Gertrude (Puls) Lewy. His mother, who was not Jewish, died in 1931 when Heinz was only six years old. The following year, Heinz was placed in a Jewish orphanage. The Auerbach orphanage on Schoenhauser Allee sheltered about one hundred children who had lost one or both parents. Heinz' father, who was himself an orphan, had resided in this orphanage for seven years. Already in the first year of the Nazi regime Arthur was arrested and imprisoned in Oranienburg. There he was beaten so severely that he lost all his teeth and suffered a heart attack. Over the next five years the family endured increasing anti-Semitic agitation, but the turning point came in 1938. Soon after Arthur's second wedding (to Johanna Arzt), and on the very day of Heinz' Bar Mitzvah in March, Arthur was arrested again. Through he was promptly released, he was soon forced to sell his business. During Kristallnacht Arthur was able to evade arrest only by walking the streets until receiving the all clear signal from his wife. With the help of a relative in Boston, the family was able to secure American visas, but they were prevented from leaving the country when Arthur failed his medical exam at the American consulate. In desperation, Arthur sent Heinz on a Kindertransport to France in July 1939. The group of forty children were given refuge in a castle in the town of Quincy near Paris. In the fall of 1940, Quaker relief workers accompanied the children to an OSE home at Château de Chabannes in unoccupied France. Early in 1942, with the help of the International Red Cross, Heinz learned that his parents had reached America. At the last minute, after Arthur had passed a second physical, the couple sailed from Rotterdam. Three days later the Germans invaded Holland. Once they learned of their son's whereabouts, Arthur and Johanna applied to get him a visa, and Heinz was able to make his way to Casablanca. In June 1942 he sailed for New York on board the Serpa Pinto with a group of about 50 children that the American Friends Service Committee had helpfed to leave France, under the auspices of the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children (USCOM). (The children on this convoy who left without their parents later became known as the One Thousand Children.) The following summer, eighteen-year-old Heinz was drafted into the American army. He landed in Europe just after D-Day. After fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and across Germany, Heinz' unit took part in the liberation of Buchenwald.
- Record last modified:
- 2017-08-15 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1087424
