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Young children, supervised by female staff, sit and play at tables in a classroom of a postwar OSE children's home.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 05242
Young children, supervised by female staff, sit and play at tables in a classroom of a postwar OSE children's home.

Young children, supervised by female staff, sit and play at tables in a classroom of a postwar OSE children's home.

Photographer
Walter Limot/ Photo Limot
Date
Circa 1945 - 1948
Locale
France
Photo Designation
DISPLACED PERSONS/RETURN TO LIFE -- Orphans/Children's Homes/Summer Camps -- France -- General
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Andre Limot

About This Photograph

Event History
Le Petit Monde, also known as Melbourne House, was an OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) children's home in Paris, which sheltered some 30-35 Jewish pre-school children, ages 2-6. These children had been recovered from the homes of French families, where they had been hidden during the war. The home was established and directed by Simone Weil, who had trained as an early childhood educator in Strasbourg before the war, and had been active in the wartime French-Jewish underground. Adopting the Montessori educational approach she studied in Strasbourg, Weil organized the orphans at Le Petit Monde into small family units consisting of children of various ages. Each group was headed by an early childhood educator-in-training. Le Petit Monde operated for approximately two years before all the children were placed with families in France or emigrated abroad.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Provenance: Andre Limot
 
Record last modified: 2011-04-15 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1167053