Rescuing the Children: A Holocaust Memoir

by Vivette Samuel, Charles B. Paul (Translator), Elie Wiesel (Foreword by)

Overview

Rescuing the Children is the memoir of Vivette Samuel, who at age twenty-two began working for the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE, or Society for Assistance to Children). The OSE and similar organizations saved 86 percent of Jewish children in France from deportation to Nazi concentration and extermination camps.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299177430
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	02/28/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Vivette Samuel had a long career in social work and lived in Paris, France. Charles B. Paul, a historian, is professor emeritus in the humanities department at San José State University. He was among the children rescued by the OSE.

Table of Contents

Illustrations
Foreword: Rescue the Children—but the Others?
A Reminiscence
Introduction

1 Odessa to Paris
2 War, Exodus, and Occupation
3 To Be Committed at the Age of Twenty
4 Rivesaltes: Behind the Barbed Wire
5 At the Time of the Deportations
6 The Hunt for the Children
7 Going Underground
8 Coming Out of the War
9 Fifty Years Later
10 Children's Odysseys

Appendix 1: What Happened to Them?
Appendix 2: Some Numbers
Appendix 3: Chronology
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Samuel recalls her work with the organization Euvre de Secours aux Enfants (or Society for Assistance to Children), which worked in occupied France to save Jewish children from deportation and certain death at the hands of the Nazi regime. She discusses her activities from convincing interned parents to separate from their children to arranging with French villagers to shelter the children. Translated from the 1995 work . Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"A valuable addition to the field of Holocaust history that provides solid institutional information along with dramatic, poignant, heart-rendering tales of rescue and survival."--Susan Zuccotti, author of The Holocaust, the French, and the Jews

"This testimony by Vivette Samuel is important not only because she describes dramatic events that took place during the occupation of France but also because she brings to light insufficiently known facts about an organization--the OEuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE)--whose devotion to human causes does honor to humanity. I confess that I read this book with a great deal of emotion, because I owe so much to the OSE. It was the OSE that, in June 1945, took charge of the four hundred 'children of Buchenwald, ' [including me]."--Elie Wiesel, winner of the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize

From the Publisher