The Rescue of Jewish Children Before, During and After the Holocaust
International Conference Marking the 30th Anniversary of Yad LaYeled
International Conference Marking the 30th Anniversary of Yad LaYeled
The Rescue of Jewish Children
Before, During and After the Holocaust
May 4th, 2025
Biographies and Abstracts
Rosie Whitehouse
Bio
Rosie Whitehouse, a journalist, writes about Holocaust survivors for BBC Online, the Observer, Tablet magazine, The Jewish Chronicle and Haaretz. She is the author of Two Sisters and The People on the Beach (both published by Hurst), and the Bradt guide to Europe’s Holocaust memorials, museums and sites. She is also the Historical Advisor to the '45 Aid Society.
Abstract
When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, Marion and Huguette Müller’s family was torn apart. After their mother was deported to Auschwitz, the two young Jewish women fled to the Alpine skiing town of Val d’Isère, where they were rescued by an incredibly courageous doctor.
Through intrepid reporting, sensitive family interviews, and thousands of records, Rosie Whitehouse traced the decades-old mysteries of the Müller sisters’ story, seeking closure and justice for her family and the doctor’s. Why did he shelter them? Who had betrayed their mother?
She looks at the moral questions involved and the resonance of the story of the Righteous. She considers how the Righteous can be used as a positive educational tool.
Whitehouse will also discuss the impact of the experience of being a hidden child.
She will also briefly discuss her role as the Historical Advisor to the '45 Aid Society who represent the 732 child survivors brought to the UK between 1945-48. In this context she will discuss child survivors post-war experiences and how they impact on our understanding of the Holocaust.
Bert Jan Flim
Bio
Bert Jan Flim is a Dutch researcher on the history of the hiding of Jews in The Netherlands during World War Two. He wrote four books on this subject and was one of the editors of the Dutch volume of The Encyclopaedia of the Righteous Among the Nations (2004). His father, Herman Flim (1922-2009), was a member of the NV-group that saved the lives of 226 Jewish children and 28 Jewish adults.
In his latest research Flim collected information on the hiding of almost 3.800 Dutch Jewish war orphans and their relatives. The resulting database allows quantitative analysis and provides answers to many questions that these Jewish hiders, their next of kin and researchers might have. The qualitative part of his book, containing 163 hiding stories, covers all aspects of the Jewish hiding in the Netherlands. Some stories are very warming, some are very grim. Flims book will be published later this year.
Abstract
In 1942 the majority of the 140.000 Dutch Jews lived in the three big cities in the western part of The Netherlands. From July 1942 onwards thousands tried to escape deportation by fleeing to non-Jewish friends and acquaintances, who lived nearby. For instance, in a non-Jewish neighbourhood in the same city or in the surrounding countryside. This `unorganized’ hiding took place in a densely populated area with a very active police force. Many of these `unorganized’ hiders were caught and murdered.
Jews who were hidden by a hiding organization were mostly taken to the countryside in the Northern, Eastern or Southern parts of the country. About 1.100 Jewish children and 1.200 Jewish adults were hidden in this way by seven big resistance groups. These organizations provided the hidden Jews with food coupons, clothes and shoes, and, if needed, with false papers and/or a new hiding place.
My presentation focuses on the differences between the two forms of hiding.
Dr. Amy Williams
Bio
Dr Amy Williams recently completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Yad Vashem where she discovered the Kindertransport lists. Amy has written one co-authored book with Prof. Bill Niven on the memory of the Kindertransport for Camden House. She is now working on her second co-authored book with Prof. Niven on the history of the Kindertransport for Yale University Press. Amy was the Kindertransport historical advisor for the new documentary “I was 8814” about Hanna Zack Miley, a Kindertransport survivor based in America. Amy will soon begin her research in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Sweden to find other Kindertransport lists.
Abstract
It was previously thought that the Kindertransport lists had been destroyed. But my recent discovery proves that they do exist and that they open up new lines of enquiry for scholars and Kindertransport families. The lists have a historical significance as well as an emotional one. This talk reflects upon the many different responses to the lists from biographical to operational. I will also discuss their significance in terms of how they were compiled, distributed, and used in the rescue of the Kinder. I conclude by rethinking whether all Kindertransports necessarily meant rescue as some lists reveal a different fate.
Dr. Boaz Cohen
Bio
Dr. Boaz Cohen, an historian, is the head of the Holocaust Studies program at Western Galilee College in Akko, Israel. and an affiliated research fellow at the Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the UCL Institute for Advanced Studies, London.
Dr. Cohen's work focuses on the postwar Jewish world, the development of Holocaust historiography and memory in social and cultural contexts, the agency of Holocaust survivors and their early testimonies, and the rehabilitation and early testimonies of child Holocaust survivors. His latest papers are about the Nazi war against the Jewish child and Israeli Holocaust memory and the Cold war.
He is co-founder with Dr. Verena Buser (Berlin) of the “Children of War, Holocaust and Genocide” project,
Abstract
This lecture explores the rehabilitation of Jewish child Holocaust survivors in postwar Poland, focusing on the years 1944–1947. It will show how Jewish educators—often survivors themselves—addressed the severe psychological and behavioral challenges presented by children traumatized by war, loss, and persecution. Central to their work were efforts to rebuild trust, reclaim Jewish identity, and reintegrate children into communal life through children’s homes that emphasized emotional support, education, and innovative self-governance. The study highlights tensions around punishment versus patience, and Christian identities versus Jewish renewal. Drawing on firsthand accounts and archival material, the lecture will show how caregivers, without professional psychological training, developed adaptive strategies grounded in empathy and commitment. Their work forms a critical, if understudied, chapter in both Holocaust recovery and postwar child rehabilitation, with implications for contemporary efforts to support war-affected children globally.
Dr. Verena Buser
Bio
Dr. Verena Buser is Associate Researcher of the Holocaust Studies Program of the Western Galilee College and lives in Berlin, Germany. Her areas of research include childhood during and after the Holocaust and Zionist and non-Zionist Training for Emigration. Currently, she holds as research fellowships by the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem as part of her rehabilitation project "It started with words" German-Jewish Childhood and Youth (1920-1945". In the past, she received research grants by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York, the Hadassah Brandeis Institute or the Leo Baeck Institute New York. Together with Dr. Boaz Cohen she founded in 2016/17 the project „Children after War, Holocaust and Genocide“ (cwg1945.org).
Abstract
The Holocaust and WWII destroyed both Jewish and non-Jewish families. An estimated 13 million children were either full or half orphans when the war came to an end. “Where are my loved ones?” were of existential importance to survivors and deported Europeans.
The lecture will discuss the establishment of search and tracing initiatives—both on a transnational and individual level. These activities were crucial for the rehabilitation for survivors of Nazi Germany as search was synonymous with clarification and closure and to know about peoples’ fate, to know what happened, to gain a clear understanding or knowledge of one’s situation. Survivors held a deep hope to renew a connection to the old or lost world, to find a new connection to familiar surroundings, or only to belong to someone.
Madene Shachar
Bio
Madene Shachar is a veteran educator and has been a museum guide at the Ghetto Fighters' House Museum and Yad Layeled Children's Memorial Museum in Israel since 2000. She holds a Master's Degree in Holocaust Studies from the University of Haifa. Presently, she is the director of the Ghetto Fighters' House international online lecture series "Talking Memory." Her research interests include Holocaust education, Holocaust memorials and the representation of the Holocaust in the museum space. She has participated in conferences and workshops both in Israel and abroad and has written numerous articles and chapters on various subjects in the field of Holocaust education and Holocaust representation.
Abstract
The exhibition Here Began My Childhood focuses on the life of Jewish orphans after liberation and their preparation to make Aliya to Eretz Israel and brings the story of how these children coped with their past, while honouring the tremendous work of those who undertook the difficult task to rescue them, to rehabilitate them, and prepare them to build their future in Eretz Israel.
Based on the Ghetto Fighters’ House archives, the exhibition displays stages in the Jewish child survivors’ post-war lives: Without a Home, Back to Life, the Promised Land and the Bricha.
This presentation will focus on the use of the museum’s robust archival material that is used in the museum space in order to introduce visitors, especially the young generation, to a less known chapter in the history of the Holocaust.
Greta Barak
Bio
Greta Barak holds a BA in Comparative Literature and an MA in Jewish Studies from Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, and an MA in Israel Studies awarded by the University of Haifa.
She worked as an independent researcher for Hashava (The Company for Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims’ Assets), where she engaged in historical, genealogical and archival research on Holocaust victims in Northern Transylvania.
For the past four years, Greta Barak has been a full-time archivist at the Ghetto Fighters’ House Archives. She is involved in several cataloguing and digitization projects and provides reference services for researchers and the general public. She is currently enrolled in the Archival and Information Science Program at Tel Aviv University.
Abstract
In September 1947, a train under the auspices of the Red Cross departed Romania carrying over 420 Jewish children, via Prague, to the Netherlands. The children, who had been gathered from different parts of Romania, including orphanages, were taken to the "Ilaniah" children's village, located on the grounds of a former Jewish psychiatric hospital in Apeldoorn. After one year, in October 1948, they embarked on the "Negba" ship to Israel.
This presentation focuses on the children's rehabilitation in the "Ilaniah" village, drawing upon several souvenir albums created during their one-year stay in Apeldoorn, and which are preserved today in the GFH Archives.