Rescue and Flight: American Relief Workers Who Defied the Nazis

5. Marseille, 1942

5 Marseille, 1942 An AmericAn reAder of the unitAriAn’S Publicity during the first half of 1942 might have noticed that a great deal was being written about the Unitarian Service Committee’s medical program, but far less was being said about the committee’s kindergartens.The kindergartens had been set up at the Rivesaltes internment camp, which had by far the most children of any of the camps. While Noel and Herta Field had organized the kindergarten program in the previous spring, by early 1942 many of the kindergartens at Rivesaltes had in fact disappeared. The list of kindergarten staff—mainly young Jewish women interned at Rivesaltes—was still long, but the children had all but vanished.The disappearance was mainly the work of the Jewish Children’sAid Society (oSe), which shared its Marseille offices with the Unitarian Service Committee’s medical clinic. The Jewish organization’s social welfare program had evolved into an operation to liberate children—either openly or under cover. By fronting the kindergarten programs, the Unitarian Service Committee was able to help with these activities. Liberating children from internment camps had been the singleminded goal of oSe director Joseph Weill since the autumn of 1940.1 Freeing children from the trauma of camp life would often mean separating children from their parents, and while breaking up families in this way was not initially an attractive idea to many relief workers, members of the Nimes Committee eventually came to agree and to cooperate. Many of the children freed from the camps were taken to one of the many oSe children’s homes in France because emigration to the United States seemed impossible except for a lucky few. About three hundred had been taken to the United States in 1941, as an expansion of the children’s party that Martha Sharp had started with 120 | mArSeille, 1942 the American Committee to Save European Children. Much larger trips had been envisioned, but an initiative to bring several thousand children to the United States had died in the U.S. Congress. The Unitarian Service Committee and the Jewish Children’s Aid Society sought to recruit staff who could work on the inside to help bring the children out. In the summer of 1941, Herta Field had met a young French Jewish woman namedVivette Hermann who was looking for a social work position. When Herta told her that young children were interned in these camps,Vivette’s reaction was one of shock, but when she was asked whether she would agree to voluntarily intern herself at Rivesaltes to help the children there, she readily agreed.Vivette moved into the camp in November 1941, and by the time she left in May of 1942 she had helped several hundred children to leave. She recalled that only five young Jewish children remained at Rivesaltes, children whose parents could not bear being separated from them.2 In most cases, oSe was able to release young children openly with the consent of camp authorities.3 For more difficult cases and for adolescents , the young people were often smuggled out or taken out on 15. Preschool class organized by the Unitarian Service Committee, Rivesaltes Internment Camp, 1942. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. mArSeille, 1942 | 121 16. Children outside Rivesaltes Internment Camp, 1942. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. false pretenses. The Unitarian Service Committee medical clinic in Marseille was a handy excuse, and some children were summoned to the clinic on “doctor’s orders” and never returned. Others were taken on children’s excursions from Rivesaltes and were later reported to have “run away” from the group.4 A delivery truck to the camp was modified to hide children under the passenger seat. One of the Unitarian Service Committee staff at Rivesaltes was a young French Jewish woman named Jacqueline Levy who sometimes wore a large cloak that she used for hiding young children she was removing from the camp.5 While the kindergartens were successfully shrinking, the Unitariansponsored medical program was continuing to expand into a major program. The Marseille clinic offered thousands of consultations each month and now also included services in X rays, a laboratory, orthopedics , dental plates, dermatology, and laryngology.6 In addition to the Marseille clinic, the committee opened a small hospital inToulouse for severe medical cases. French government funds and other organizations paid for some of its operations, and the Unitarian Service...