Title

Postcards Sent by a Jewish Child Sheltered by OSE to his Mother, Rita Goldstein

Authors

Object ID

2021.1.46a-e

Object Name

Postcards

Date

1940

Files

Description

Five postcards written in blue and black ink. All bearing blue french stamps.

Information Provided by Michael D. Bulmash:

The OSE, (L'Œuvre de secours aux enfants), was a humanitarian children’s aid organization founded in Russia in 1912 to provide social and medical assistance to Jewish families in need. With the Nazi rise to power in 1933, OSE’s main office was moved from Berlin to Paris, where Jewish children-refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria- were placed in OSE children’s homes in the area. By 1939 housed more than 200 children had been placed in one of the homes in the Paris region. The child who wrote these postcards to his mother had been placed in one such home known as the Villa des Tourelles, located in the Paris region at 113 Rue de Paris, Soisy-sous-Montmorency, France. His mother- Rita Goldstein- is living in Hotel d’Angers in Le Man. These postcards, one of which has the Union OSE stamp, were written on the eve of the German occupation in May 1940

At the time of the writing of these postcards in 1940, the OSE mission had been extended to providing social services to foreign Jews living in squalid conditions in internment camps such as Gurs and Rivesaltes. OSE attempted to relocate Jewish children from these camps to homes where they would be cared for in the unoccupied Vichy region of France such as Chabannes and Izieu. With the German occupation of the Vichy region in 1942, the OSE mission changed to more clandestine activities involving the development of hiding places and creating false documents as well as smuggling children across the border to Switzerland and Spain. Through the extraordinary efforts of the OSE- and the many Jewish and non-Jewish persons who places their lives at great risk attempting to assist Jewish children escape the Nazi extermination machine, more than 5000 Jewish children were saved. The work of the OSE continued post-liberation assisting surviving children from Buchenwald such as Elie Wiesel find placements in French rehabilitation facilities.

Dimensions

5 3/4 x 4"

Keywords

L'Œuvre de secours aux enfants, OSE, Rita Goldstein, Chabannes, Izieu

Subcollection

Rescue

Recommended Citation

"Postcards Sent by a Jewish Child Sheltered by OSE to his Mother, Rita Goldstein" (1940). Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection. 2021.1.46a-e.
https://digital.kenyon.edu/bulmash/1748