The Tehran Children

 

1200 Jewish refugees from Tehran.

 

Even though the items in this article cannot be classified as travel documents, they are important and interesting enough to add images of them and explore the story behind them.

 

During the war, each side, be it allied or axis, established camps to house enemy civilians that were caught after the outbreak of war on their territory.

 

As was the case in World War One, and previous conflicts before and after, civilians not always managed to escape in time and return back home safely. In such cases they were incarcerated and placed into civilian holding facilities.

 

Sometimes, through negotiations through a third party, like the International Red Cross or a neutral country such as Sweden or Switzerland, there was a possibility of a civilian exchange: British or Americans were exchanged for German or Japanese.

 

During the war hundreds of civilian camps were operating in Germany, France, Holland, Switzerland, Ireland, UK, US, Australia, South America and even in British Palestine: Some camp locations where at Atlit, Jaffa, Bethlehem, Haifa and Bat Yam.

 

Internment of Japanese Americans

Internment of German Americans

Internment of Italian Americans

List of concentration and internment camps

Hutchinson Internment Camp

Cyprus internment camps

Atlit detainee camp

 

The article here will bring into light the story of the “Tehran Children” as they are remembered here in Israel, the survival odyssey of about 1,200 Jewish children from Poland, who found themselves in the Soviet Union and later on in Persia (Iran) ruled by Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the son of the abdicated Shah Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had kept Iranian neutrality but was forced out of power after a joint Anglo-Soviet force that occupied northern Iran from August 25^th 1941.

 

It all began on September 1st 1939 when Germany invaded and occupied western Poland. This led to thousands of Poles fleeing east into eastern Poland first, then further east into the Soviet Union. Again, in 1941, more fled into the USSR after the German invasion into eastern Poland and further east. Over a hundred thousand Jews fled east, joining about 1 million Christian Poles that also found refugee there. In the chaos, over 1,000 Jewish children from Poland found themselves caught as well in the Soviet Union and placed into shelters and orphanages. They have lost their parents, separated from their families and had no one to stay with them in the harsh conditions that they were in.

 

Originally, Moscow authorized the transfer to Iran of 24,000 Polish civilians and released POW’s. now forming part of Anders Army under General Władysław Anders. However, at the end close to 120,000 refugees ended up in camps throughout Iran by 1942, much more than the planned quantity. Once reaching to safe ground, many applied for assistance at the Polish legation in the capital, receiving financial aid and also passports that enabled them to continue travelling to various destinations such as British Palestine, Australia, UK, US and even India.

 

About 1,000 children were also part of the mass exodus out of the USSR, and they left Soviet central Asia via trains to Krasnovodsk and then by ship to the port of Pahlavi in Iran.

 

Already back in 1942, the Jewish Agency for Palestine was negotiating with the Polish Government-in-Exile based at London regarding adding Jewish refugees also into the planned evacuated Poles into Iran. Jewish Agency for Israel representatives reached Tehran and waited for the arrival of the refugees and also began to locate the Jewish children and separate them from the other refugees, preparing their admittance into British Palestine after negotiating their entry with the British via David Ben-Gurion and Polish cabinet minister Stanislaw Kott.

 

After recovering from malnutrition & illness, the children reached the Mandate in several batches at the beginning of 1943, taking the long ordeal of sailing via ships from Bandar Shahpur on the Persian Gulf proceeding to Karachi, Pakistan. They continued via the Red Sea to the Egyptian city of Suez, reaching British Palestine via train and to the northern detention camp of Atlit, south of Haifa.

 

The children then crossed the Sinai Desert by train and arrived at the Atlit refugee camp in northern Palestine on February 18, 1943, where the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) welcomed them. A second transport of 110 children arrived in Palestine overland (via Iraq) on August 28, 1943. In all, some 870 “Tehran Children” arrived in Palestine, and soon settled on kibbutzim (collective farms) and moshavim (cooperative farming villages). Thirty-five of the “Tehran Children” died either as civilians or as soldiers in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948-1949.

 

Have attached images of a special permit to enter Atlit camp issued in February 1943 by the British Inspector of Frontier Forces, Clearance Camp Security dating from the 15^th. It was issued to Chaim Neiger aged 70 who was a Zionist activist from Galicia, Poland, before his immigration to the Mandate in 1937 and settling in Haifa.

 

Another permit is for entering another internment camp south, near Tel Aviv, issued to a lawyer who was meeting his detained Jewish client, a  young woman who was accused of hanging posters in support of the Soviet Union before the German invasion.

 

Finally, a train ticket to reach Atlit camp.

 

 

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