Within the Confines of Legality: How the OSE Succeeded in Liberating Hundreds of Rivesaltes's Youngest Prisoners

Abstract

The Œuvre de secours aux enfants (the “Society for Children’s Aid”, or OSE) was one of several humanitarian organizations working within the confines of the Rivesaltes transit camp in southern France during the Second World War. The OSE, a Jewish humanitarian aid organization, was particularly concerned with Jewish child prisoners in transit and internment camps like Rivesaltes. Members of the OSE entered Rivesaltes camp on a daily basis throughout the war in order to distribute food and offer supplementary educational opportunities to the young children interred there. Its primary objective, however, was to oversee the safe removal of as many Jewish children as possible from Rivesaltes. To do this, the OSE relied on its established children’s homes throughout the country, as well as new ones that were instituted during the war, to petition the Vichy government for the liberation of Jewish children from Rivesaltes. These procedures were expensive, bureaucratic, and lengthy; however, they allowed the OSE to secure the release of many Jewish children from Rivesaltes and other camps. Throughout the course of the Second World War, the OSE—operating legally and transparently—succeeded in liberating hundreds of Rivesaltes’s youngest prisoners.