Alice Goldberger was a German Jew who fled the Nazi rise and lost her entire family to the Holocaust.
Alice Goldberger was a German Jew who fled the Nazi rise and lost her entire family to the Holocaust. After the war, she created a haven for child survivors.
Alice took in children whom the world had betrayed, children she feared would never learn to trust again. They had survived in hiding or in brutal camps during the Holocaust. They came to Alice malnourished or sick, some suffering night terrors from what they had witnessed. Most of their parents were murdered in the Holocaust.
The Central British Fund brought more than 700 child survivors, some only infants, to England after the war. Alice cared for dozens of them, offered stability and love, celebrated their birthdays, and, for those who did not know theirs, gave them new birthdays.
Through the most ordinary experiences, such as drawing, playing and visits to the seashore, the children began to heal. “Slowly the feeling of security crept upon them and they began to settle down very well," Alice wrote in a report to her funders. However, their traumas could not be entirely shed. Alice wrote about one child often heard repeating, “I am a lucky boy that I have not been shot as a baby. ”
During Foster Care Month, we remember Alice and the children who found a home in her care.
Photos: USHMM, courtesy of Zdenka Husserl
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