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[com…] pelled OSE to postpone the decision.
Luckily, the Gestapo was focused on its security tasks, and OSE homes were
spared raids at a time when the children were most vulnerable.
By the
end of 1943, 1,600 children were in OSE's care in the Southern Zone. Its under
ground network was led from Lyons by Georges Garel, a member of the Resistance
known for his daring, who had been brought into OSE to set up its clandestine
operations. Garel had the support of the archbishop of Toulouse, Monseigneur
Jules-Gérard Saliège, and his coadjutor, Monseigneur de
Courrèges. De Courrèges, himself later arrested and deported,
began by helping to arrange accommodations for 24 children who left OSE foster
families for Christian institutions.
Soon, the entire Southern Zone was
being combed for Christian children's homes willing to take in Jewish children
under false names. Contact was subsequently made with Protestant officials; the
Reverend Rolland de Pury, before his own arrest, and the Reverend Marc Boegner,
the leader of France's Protestants, lent their support as well. And critical
assistance came from people of every background and social class; by 1943 it
was the rare Christian family that, once approached, refused to help shelter
Jewish children. This welling up of solidarity allowed OSE to find in each
diocese, in every department, institutions – religious or secular, public
or private – to accept and care for Jewish children or act as OSE's
screen.
The OSE network's first underground workers were women staff
members of homes that had been closed. Some Christian institutions listed them
as personnel under false identities, and Christian resistance agents aided
their rescue work. When it was certain that a local institution could give or
arrange refuge for children and that the workers' presence was reasonably safe,
frequent arrivals began of children under OSE protection.
The children,
carrying essentials, traveled in small groups under the supervision of a social
worker or group leader, who turned back after passing them on to the local
contact. The local agent put the children up wherever possible until
accommodations could be arranged with families or institutions. When, as
sometimes happened, a child's false identity broke down – whether it was
the fault of the child or the guardian – he or she had to be removed
immediately and placed elsewhere to avoid compromising the other children and
support network in the area.
OSE made arrangements to ensure that,
whatever happened, its work would be carried on. In order that children given
false identities and placed with families could be traced even in the event
that all OSE workers were captured and disappeared, coded lists of their names
were compiled and sent to Geneva, where the organization had established an
office in December 1942. (From its base in neutral Switzerland, OSE was able to
stay in touch with the outside world and to maintain steady contact with the
headquarters in Chambéry.)
At the peak of the terror, OSE's
board drew up plans to smuggle children into Switzerland or areas of France
that remained relatively safe. The Chambéry headquarters' delegate to
the regional bureau at Limoges, Jenny Masour, working with directors of homes,
selected children to be transferred to the Italian Zone of France or to be
smuggled across the Swiss border. Those chosen for Switzerland were, in
general, children whose "Jewish" appearance or whose attachment to
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FRENCH
CHILDREN OF THE HOLOCAUST A memorial
Serge Klarsfeld
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