‘When We Came to Persia: It Was Like Resurrection’: Child Refugees in Tehran During World War II and Their Resettlement in Mandatory Palestine

Abstract

From March 1942 until the end of 1943, around 2000 Jewish children arrived in Iran under the supervision of the Jewish Agency and the American women’s Zionist organisation Hadassah. This article discusses the challenges this group of Jewish refugees faced in Iran and in Palestine. The so-called Tehran children gained attention as a refugee group of political and symbolic significance during and after World War II. By comparing the experience and perception of refugees with the expectations and reports of the Jewish aid organisations, this article illuminates how the conflicts between Jewish organisations and governmental entities influenced the lives of child refugees in Iran. The children’s arrival in Iran and their immigration to Palestine meant a new beginning for this particular group of refugees. The Zionist vocational training in the camps and their experience as a group generated a shared Jewish national narrative that helped them to navigate through loss and trauma and cope with the challenges of adjusting to a new environment in a strange place. Child refugees were in a particularly disadvantaged position in comparison to adult refugees. During their flight from Europe, they rarely had the possibility to determine their destination, and they had little if any way to improve their vulnerable situation. Their lives took a turn for the better in Iran. Their shared experience and their new identity as ‘remnants of European Jewry’ (Hadassah Newsletter. April 1943. Youth Aliyah Records in the Hadassah Archives. I-578/RG 17. Box 34. Folder 8. American Jewish Historical Society, Boston, MA and New York, NY) and ‘pioneers’ (Ibid.) of a Jewish state gave them a new narrative and identity to hold on to. The children’s histories illuminate another aspect of the complexity of transnational Holocaust history.