The Schleifer Children: A Special Holocaust Rescue Case

From its creation in January 1944, the U.S. War Refugee Board (WRB) encountered almost insurmountable obstacles in its work to save the surviving remnants of European Jewry. The WRB’s skeleton staff and bare bones budget strained under a workload that included supporting rescue activities, sending relief supplies, dealing with Nazi ransom offers and urging coordinated Allied refugee policy. The fact that the Board had no ability to affect the Allied war effort in order to save Jewish lives proved to be an additional burden. As a result of these hindrances, the WRB could generally offer only its sympathy, not real action, to the hundreds of individuals who sent pleas on behalf of loved ones caught in the Nazi onslaught. Yet one private petition did receive special attention: a plea from the parents of four young children trapped in Rumania.

David and Ida Schleifer had come to the United States, leaving their children in the temporary care of relatives. When the U.S. entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Schleifer children were unable to leave fascist-dominated Rumania to join their parents in New York City. Conditions for Rumanian Jews were precarious prior to the war in Europe; they deteriorated rapidly as Nazi Germany wrested control of most of the continent. Mr. and Mrs. Schleifer knew that without immediate action their youngsters could well perish. The Schleifer children would become a test case in the efforts of the War Refugee Board to rescue Jews trapped in fascist Eastern Europe.

The Rumanian Situation

Following the First World War, Rumania acquired a vast tract of Hungarian territory that included a large number of Jews. Although it signed minority rights treaties guaranteeing citizenship and full civil and political equality for all, xenophobic Rumanians ignored those promises. Strident nationalism gave rise to the paramilitary, anti-Semitic Iron Guard as the growth of Rumania’s homegrown fascism in the 1930s mirrored the development of Nazism in Germany.

In 1938 Rumania revised its citizenship laws as they applied to Jews. Under the “Revision of Citizenship” decree, Jews had to prove that their citizenship documents were genuine. When authorities refused to accept the offered proof, thousands of Jews previously regarded as Rumanian citizens were relegated to the status of resident aliens. ¹

Rumania’s king, Carol II, although an early supporter of the Iron Guard, staged a coup in 1939 in which he assumed autocratic powers and tried to suppress the out-of-control paramilitary organization. After Germany invaded Poland in September of that year, Carol declared that his nation would remain neutral in the coming conflict. When Hitler’s juggernaut overran the Low Countries and occupied the northern half of France, the Rumanian king saw even greater advantage to being a “neutral ally” of the Axis Powers. Neutrality, however, was not what the Nazis had in mind, and in August 1940 Germany demanded that Rumania cede the northern part of Transylvania to Hungary. Carol agreed. Territorial concessions to Bulgaria followed a week later.

Many Rumanians viewed the ceding of territory as a sign of weakness and an affront to the nation. Within days General Ion Antonescu, a profascist Iron Guard supporter, deposed Carol and made the king’s son, Michael, the puppet head of state. Antonescu outlawed all political organizations save the Iron Guard, instituted a military dictatorship, and allowed German “advisory” troops into the country under the pretext of protecting the Ploesti oil fields. Antonescu then allied Rumania with the Axis Powers and joined Germany in its attack on the USSR. ²

Just prior to the Antonescu coup Rumania had enacted its own version of the Nuremberg Laws. The state confiscated Jewish personal possessions and landed property. Curfew laws kept Jews off the streets except from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., when they were allowed out but only with yellow Stars of David displayed prominently on their outer clothing. Synagogues and Jewish schools were closed. Street attacks, pogroms, and general violence against Jewry went hand in hand with the legislative restrictions. In some areas Jews could not hold any jobs except that of...