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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2022

Competition as an escape for Jewish children: the case of children's homes (1939-1950)

Résumé

When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, the Jewish medical and philanthropic association, Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), and France’s Scout association, Éclaireurs israélites de France (EIF), evacuated Jewish children from the Paris region to the South of France to protect them from the Nazi menace. Each association opened four children’s homes responsible for the care of several hundreds of young people, mostly sons and daughters of immigrant parents who were destitute, persecuted or imprisoned in French camps and had no way of ensuring their children’s safety or evacuation abroad. After the Armistice, the number of children in these homes increased dramatically. In 1940, the OSE opened seven new homes for roughly 1,600 Jewish children aged between four and fourteen, while the EIF took in 853 of them. Following the Liberation, certain homes remained open for the orphans and survivors of the camps. In 1945, the OSE took care, in particular, of 1,355 young Jews divided among 27 centres. In these homes, sport played a decisive role in several respects: it allowed children who often arrived in poor health to maintain a healthy body, while providing some relief from mental suffering through the essential mission of safeguarding their souls. In this regard, the sports competitions held in the homes became effective remedies and each home was responsible for creating its own sports club. Instructors set up training sessions and inter-home sports championships with athletic, health, and pedagogical objectives. The competitions were intended to shape young men and women who were not only strong both physically and mentally, but were also altruistic, united, honest, and disciplined. In the singular contexts of the Occupation and then the Liberation, the recreational and educational importance of youth competition was fully redefined in relation to its stakes and modalities. The aim of this paper is to analyze these competitions so as to measure their actual impact. Research is based on the study of the OSE and EIF archives stored at the Holocaust Memorial, Mémorial de la Shoah, and on the analysis of community news bulletins and postwar testimonies.

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Dates et versions

hal-04410519 , version 1 (22-01-2024)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04410519 , version 1

Citer

Etienne Pénard. Competition as an escape for Jewish children: the case of children's homes (1939-1950). Competition and collaboration in sport and physical education from Antiquity to Modern time. 25th international congress of CESH, Sep 2022, Bucarest, Romania. ⟨hal-04410519⟩
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