When Michael Burri invited me to edit a special issue of the Journal of Austrian-American History, I welcomed the opportunity. Devoted to the study of the historic relationship between the United States and Austria, this journal offered me the occasion to issue a call for articles that would address an underresearched topic, that is, the study of the study of children and youth who had fled to the United States after the National Socialists annexed Austria. And, I admit I had a selfish motive for the choice of topic as it dovetails with one of my research projects, a collective biography of a group of fifteen- to sixteen-year-old Austrian schoolboys of Jewish heritage who fled Vienna between April 1938 and 1939. Consequently, I worked many of my own research questions into the call, for example, what did they experience in the days before they fled; what networks were available to them; to what extent were they able to exercise agency; how did they reshape their identity; and what agencies helped them and how.
In the original call—“Age, Agency, and Agencies and the Migration of Austrian Children and Youth to the U.S.”—I pointed out that research on immigration to the United States from Austria after the Anschluss has focused almost exclusively on adults. Indeed, Walter Laquer's collective biography Generation Exodus. The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany, published first in German in 2000 and English in 2001, is perhaps the most comprehensive study to date on this young cohort born between 1914 and 1928. A refugee from that generation, Laquer devotes a chapter to immigration to the United States in which he covers topics ranging from the difficulties in getting visas and expectations of and adjustment to the new surroundings, to the impact that age and gender played for this group.
One reason for few publications focusing on young refugees may lie in part with the immigration policies of the United States concerning children at the time. Whereas some 20,000 Jewish children from the European continent entered Britain on special child transports (Kindertransport), there were no similar large-scale undertakings in the United States. In the twelve years from 1933 and 1945 only an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 Jewish “unaccompanied” children, that is, those traveling without their parents, were admitted to the United States. The efforts of Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under Franklin D. Roosevelt, to offer unaccompanied children refugee under the Wagner-Rogers Bill died in Congress in mid-1939.1
Whether they were unaccompanied or not, there has been limited attention given Austrian children and youth fleeing National Socialism and migrating to the United States. One example is told in Steven Pressman's HBO film 50 Children: One American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany (2014) and book of the same name. In 1939 the Jewish couple Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus were able to save fifty children from both Austria and Germany. Drawing from his mother-in-law's account of this undertaking and additional research, Pressman relates the remarkable and at times heartbreaking story of the efforts of his in-laws. This group of fifty children is the largest known group of young refugees traveling without their parents to be admitted to the United States.
The stories of the limited number of children and youth who immigrated to the United States, some with their parents, some alone, and some with other children remain a largely untapped resource for scholars. The three articles in this volume attempt to address this lacuna. Drawing on a variety of texts, they shine light on the rich diversity of archival material available for study. They also highlight some of the challenges scholars face when working in this field. In her article “‘It is not to think that real strangers, as you are, give us so much love’: An Austrian Pen Pal's Journey to a Safe Haven in the United States,” Kirsten Krick-Aigner introduces readers to documents available on-line when she chronicles the life of Marianne Winter, born 1921, from Vienna to the United States. She explores factors in Marianne's life that may have helped her deal with the trauma of the Anschluss and emigration. At the same time, Krick-Aigner reminds us how so many lives hung on a thread.
In “On Austrian Refugee Children: Agency, Experience, and Knowledge in Ernst Papanek's ‘Preliminary Study’ from 1943,” Swen Steinberg focuses on a master's thesis submitted to Columbia University in 1943 by the Austrian pedagogue Ernst Papanek and the many questionnaires he had distributed among refugee youth. Drawing on insights in knowledge studies, he uncovers the experiential knowledge gained by both Papanek and his studied cohort. Steinberg's exploration of Papanek's papers housed at the New York Public Library suggests the materials yet to be explored.
The exceptional Austrian Heritage Collection is featured in Tim Corbett's article “‘Jumbled Mosaics’: Exploring Intracategorical Complexity in the Memoirs of Jewish Austrian (Youth) Emigrants to the United States.” The “Jumbled Mosaics” in his title is a phrase coined by one of the memoirists to aptly describe refugee identity. Through the lens of “intersectionality,” Corbett explores the ways in which age, gender, and religiosity (or lack thereof) shaped the remembered experiences of emigration.
To round out the volume, I include an original document, the first letter Hans (John) Kautsky sent to a group of classmates after his arrival in the United States dated January 1940. Ever since he fled Vienna in August 1938, he participated in a group correspondence that crossed three continents and stretched over a decade. The gripping letter conveys the impressions of the seventeen-year-old, capturing both the challenges and opportunities facing young refugees. The correspondence reminds readers of the importance of such communications for the letter writers as well as scholars today.
The articles and the letter included in this special issue point to the wealth of stories yet to be uncovered as well as the multiple lenses through which they can be discussed. Further research can tell us the many ways youth experienced life as refugees, how and if they reflected on their changing identity, how the surroundings shaped them, what types of knowledge they acquired and more. This volume only scratches the surface of the rich materials waiting to be explored and I hope it serves as a challenge to scholars to investigate the stories that lie in largely untapped (and perhaps undiscovered) resources.
Steven Pressman, 50 Children (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), 232. Walter Laquer, Generation Exodus (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), 130. Here he lists the number of unaccompanied children under sixteen who reached the United States as thirty-two in 1939. Published before Pressman's book, this points to other stories. Richard Breitman and Alan M. Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 62–67, highlight Frances Perkins's efforts to save Jewish children. All volumes address the failure of the United States to pass legislation, which would have facilitated the immigration of more young refugees.
