Tehran Children II
We left the Teitel family last in Kazakhstan in Central Asia. They had just placed their children in a local orphanage in the hopes that they would receive sufficient food to stay alive.
Meanwhile, word of the impossible living conditions in Siberia and Central Asia, and the thousands of Jews who found themselves stranded there, reached Jews living in Palestine. The Jewish Agency began to negotiate with the British for visas to get some of these Jewish refugees into Palestine. The British, ever-worried of upsetting the Arab-Jewish population balance, had an annual quota of 10,000 European Jews per year. The British took a hard line opposing any visas for adult Jews stuck in Siberia or Central Asia. However, there was a small possibility that some student visas might be granted. So, step one was to get them out of Central Asia and bring them to British-friendly country of Iran.
[image error]Photo of a Jewish woman in Siberia (don’t know who it is – photo: from Beit Hatfutzot)
In August of 1942, a deal was struck to evacuate 1,000 Jewish children to Tehran with the hopes of getting them entry visas to Palestine. Jewish organizations paid the expenses, while the Polish government-in-exile was credited with saving the children and supported them with four pounds sterling each. The Teitel children, Hannan (15) Regina (11) and cousin Emma (10) said a tearful goodbye and boarded a train to a new world and a new life. Years later, Regina told her aunt: “My parents wanted to save us. It was the right thing to do.”
Hanan, Regina and Emma traveled for three days and fifteen hundred miles, by train and, after several days’ rest, boarded another train and finally completed their journey by ship. When they arrived in Iran, they were taken to a makeshift tent camp a few miles outside of Tehran. There was a separate camp for Polish children who were also brought from Siberia. Leaders of the Jewish Camp spent quite a bit of time trying to identify and extract the Jewish children from the Polish camp. But the Jewish children didn’t want to leave because there was more food at the Polish camp and, after the years of starvation, food was key. Also, these Jewish children had learned through the school of hard knocks that being Jewish was not a desirable status.
[image error]Jewish Boys in Tehran – Photo: USHMM
There was another obstacle to extracting the Jewish children from the Polish camp. The ones in charge of the camp were the priests and they “did not easily relinquish the opportunity to ‘save souls,” Dekel writes, “particularly those of the pure souls who had not yet been ‘corrupted,; — the small children.” (Dekel 257)
The condition of the refugees was dreadful. A Polish Jew who came from Palestine was shocked to see the terrible condition of the refugees, and how the Jewish refugees were even worse than the Polish ones. “It is difficult to describe the condition of the refugees,” he writes, “the like of which I have never seen before. Swollen from starvation, dressed in rags, spiritually broken, devoid of all hope.” (Dekel 241)
The author of Tehran Children found a photo of her father taken shortly after his arrival. “It was as if he had shrunk since his Ostrow photo,” she comments, “the head disproportionally larger than the body. I also saw his expression: the expression of an old man, simultaneously weary, anxious, and cynical, a sunburned man’s face attached to a young child’s body, dressed in a dignified, if stained, khaki uniform.” (Dekel 246)
After a year in Iran, the Teitel children, along with eight hundred, fifty-seven other Jewish children took a forty-eight-day journey over land and sea to arrive in Palestine. They were not given permission to travel the short route by land, through Iraq. They arrived in Palestine in May of 1943 and were welcomed by the Jews of Palestine with great fanfare and excitement. These were the first European refugees of the war arriving in Palestine.
Hannan, Regina and Emma went to live at Kibbutz Ein Hod, where they had a cousin. Not finding Kibbutz life for him, Hannan enrolled in the Tiez Technical School in Kibbutz Yagur, near Haifa. Deeply concerned about his parents, who he knew were still living in Uzbekistan, he unsuccessfully tried to obtain visas for them to enter Palestine.
Zindel and Ruchele Teitel finally left Uzbekistan and returned to Poland. But after a short and unwelcomed stay, they made their way to Germany and settled in a displaced person’s camp. Sadly, Zindel died in 1948 of Tuberculosis, but, in 1949, Ruchele made her way to the newly created State of Israel. She lived briefly with her daughter on Kibbutz Ein Hod, but then moved in with her son, Hannan and lived with him and his family, including the author, Mikhal Dekel, for the next two decades.
As for the children, Hannan, changed his last name to Dekel (direct translation of Teitel, meaning palm tree) and had a forty-eight-year career in the Israeli Air Force. Regina took her Hebrew name of Rivka and Emma took her Hebrew name of Naomi. Both lived on Kibbutz Ein Hod. Rivka became a draftswoman at an architectural firm and Naomi became the head of Sheba Hospital and Medical Center Nursing School.
I am deeply grateful for Tehran Children and the author, Mikhal Dekel’s quest to uncover the story of her father’s family. We began in Ostrow Mazowiecka and followed the Teitel family east when the war began and then on to Siberia, Central Asia, Iran, Palestine, Poland, Germany, and the State of Israel. I learned more about the town of Ostrow which looms large in Sam and Esther’s story. I also appreciate the deep dive into what life was like for Jews and Poles who were exiled to Siberia and Central Asia. Finally, I’d never heard of the Tehran Children and I’m grateful to have learned about this fascinating piece of Holocaust history. Thank you, Mikhal, for taking us on your journey.
There is a wonderful, one-hour film about the Tehran Children with lots of interviews of the “children” – now adults. Here is a link:
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/bib264806
