50 Children

From the Introduction... The broad outline of what Gil and Eleanor Kraus, my wife's maternal grandparents, had accomplished in the spring of 1939 was not exactly a secret. Family members had long been aware of the couple's daring voyage into Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust and their return to the United States with fifty Jewish children in their care. For the rest of their lives, however, neither of them spoke in any detail with family or friends about their unlikely adventure. They certainly offered no clues that explained how--or why--a Jewish couple from Philadelphia wound up in Nazi-controlled Vienna determined to rescue children whose lives were at stake. Eleanor, however, had written it all down. At some point she typed out a richly detailed account of a seemingly far-fetched plan that began with a simple discussion between her husband, Gil, and his friend Louis Levine, the head of a national Jewish fraternal organization called Brith Sholom. At first glance, the typewritten pages read like an improbable, if not impossible, product of a vivid imagination. Incredibly, the rescue mission took place precisely as Eleanor described it. In fact, its full historical significance extended well beyond her own account. The fifty boys and girls whose lives were saved by Gil and Eleanor Kraus comprised the largest single known group of children, traveling without their parents, who were legally admitted into the United States during the Holocaust.