Caring for the Future: Jewish Orphans, Child Migration, and Jewish Humanitarianism in Early 20th-Century Britain

Charlotte Canizo is a second-year DPhil student at St Hugh’s College, working on Unaccompanied Jewish Child Migrants in British and French Jewish Humanitarianism (1903-1948) under the co-supervision of Prof. Abigail Green and Dr. Jenny Carson. Her project is in partnership with the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), a British charity which aims to educate diverse audiences in the UK about the Holocaust and its contemporary relevance. Prior to studying at Oxford, she earned an MA in Contemporary History from Sciences Po Paris (2022). Her master’s thesis focused on the rescue of Jewish children in France during the Holocaust at the Sèvres children’s home (1941-1949). Her first article on this topic was published in 2024 in the issue 220 of the Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah.

My research explores the history of humanitarian aid provided primarily by French and British Jewish organisations to unaccompanied Jewish child migrants between 1903 – the year of the Kishinev pogrom – and 1948, marking the establishment of the State of Israel. It examines how care for these children evolved across time and space, and what motivated Jewish organisations to support them.

By unaccompanied Jewish child migrant, I refer to children who had been “separated from both parents and other relatives and are not being cared for by an adult who, by law or custom, is responsible for doing so,” as defined in the United Nations’ 2005 “General Comment No. 6: Treatment of Unaccompanied and Separated Children Outside Their Country of Origin.”[1] While this terminology did not exist in the early twentieth century, it serves as a useful analytical lens through which to examine the patterns of care and displacement observed during the period. Defining childhood in this context presents challenges, as conceptions of age and legal minority varied greatly between countries, institutions, and cultural settings. For the purposes of this study, a “child” is defined as any Jewish minor under 18 years old at the time of displacement – a threshold consistent with the later UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989),[2] but used here solely to establish a consistent conceptual boundary for analysis.

This blog post focuses on a case study discussed in the first chapter of my thesis: the arrival of Jewish orphans in Britain in the early twentieth century. Specifically, this first chapter covers the migration of Jewish children orphaned by war, famine, and pogroms from the late 1860s – at the time of the Lithuanian famine – to the wave of pogroms in 1905-1906 in the Pale of Settlement. It seeks to address an important gap in historical scholarship. While considerable attention has been given to Jewish child survivors of the Holocaust,[3] the earlier experiences of Jewish orphaned children remain underexplored. And yet, hundreds of thousands of Jewish children became orphans during the pogroms of the Russian Empire and the various conflicts that broke out during this period in this region.

One pivotal moment occurred after the Kishinev pogrom of 1903, which left 47-49 Jewish victims (estimates vary) and shocked the international community. The brutality of the event galvanised Jewish organisations around the world, who increasingly turned their attention to the plight of orphaned children, widely seen as the hope and future of Jewish life. Their efforts intensified following a second, deadlier wave of pogroms in 1905-1906, during the upheavals of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) and the First Russian Revolution (1905-1907).

In Britain, a dedicated Russo-Jewish Committee was established to coordinate relief. Despite the newly introduced Aliens Act of 1905, which restricted immigration, the Committee managed to secure entry for a group of 19 Jewish orphans in 1906. The group, composed of 11 boys and 8 girls aged between 7 and 17, came from cities such as Kiev, Bialystok, Semenovka, and Odessa. You can see them in the image below.

Source: University of Southampton Special Collections, MS 173/1/5/6 part 5.

The Committee published an appeal in The Jewish Chronicle on 14 December 1906 during Hanukah week. Titled “Appeal for Adoption of Orphan Immigrant Children,” it presented the orphans as emblematic of the suffering and resilience of Eastern European Jewry.[4] Despite arriving with no financial resources, no family support in Britain, and no ability to sustain themselves, the children were allowed entry under the “political and religious persecution clauses.”[5] Their acceptance was framed as both a legal necessity and a moral imperative.

The children had arrived in Britain through the coordinated efforts of several philanthropic organisations, including the Russo-Jewish Committee and the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, both of which pledged to support them and help rebuild their lives. The primary aim of the appeal was to find adoptive families, as only a few of the children had been placed by the time it was written. While awaiting permanent homes, the children were cared for by “matrons” in temporary accommodations. To counter potential reluctance among foster parents, the appeal insisted on “the pleasure of moulding such destinies, of helping embryo ability towards the ripeness of achievement” which “should be ample recompense for any inconvenience or financial outlay which their adoption may involve.”[6]

Beyond the logistical and moral arguments, the appeal also offered a striking early acknowledgement of the psychological scars carried by the children. In a particularly vivid section, the Committee’s secretary, E. Jacob, recounted incidents revealing the depth of trauma endured by them. One boy identified a butcher’s cleaver in a shop window as resembling the weapon used to kill his father. Another child, surprised by the sound of a brass band, panicked at the sight of uniforms, screaming, “Hide, Chava – hide in the cellar!” to his younger sister, convinced that they were being attacked again.[7] Jacob described such memories as being burned into their minds – scenes that even the most experienced soldiers would find unbearable. These anecdotes are particularly revealing when we consider how little formal knowledge of child psychology existed at the time. Yet the Committee’s leadership recognised that the trauma of these children was not only physical or material, but profoundly psychological.

The fate of these children upon their arrival remains largely unknown. While some found homes with private families and others were placed in orphanages, their individual stories, like those of many displaced Jewish children of the era, remain only partially traceable. Yet the efforts made on their behalf reflect the evolving role of Jewish humanitarianism in the early twentieth century, and the growing involvement of British Jewry in child welfare and refugee relief.