American lawyer Gilbert Kraus, his wife Eleanor, and their two young children led a comfortable life in Philadelphia. As antisemitic persecutions intensified during the 1930s, the Krauses began to talk with friends about ways they might help European Jews.

In January 1939, two months after the Kristallnacht attacks in Germany, the American Jewish fraternal organization Brith Sholom contacted the Krauses to propose that they rescue fifty children. The Krauses immediately agreed to direct Brith Sholom’s child rescue project themselves.

Before leaving for Europe, the Krauses contacted the US State Department in Washington, DC. After discussing the Brith Sholom plan with State Department officials, Gilbert Kraus realized that if they selected children whose families were already on the waiting lists for US immigration visas, gathering the necessary paperwork and receiving visas would be much easier. In January 1939, at least 240,000 people born in Germany were on the State Department’s waiting lists for US immigration visas. The United States immigration laws only allowed 27,370 German immigrants to enter the United States each year.

After persuading many of their friends to provide financial affidavits, which guaranteed that the children would be supported after they arrived in the United States, Gilbert Kraus sailed for Vienna and Eleanor joined him there several weeks later. They found the city of Vienna, which had been annexed by Nazi Germany, completely transformed. Nazi flags decorated buildings on the main thoroughfares and the Jewish community, once vibrant, was deeply afraid for the future.

The Krauses had very little trouble finding families who were on waiting lists for US immigration visas—it seemed to them that the entire Jewish community wanted to escape to the United States. Nor did they have any difficulty finding parents who were willing to turn their children over to total strangers, though this had to be an emotionally difficult decision for parents to make. Aided by Dr. Robert Schless, a Philadelphia pediatrician who had accompanied them, the Krauses chose fifty children between the ages of five and fourteen, 25 boys and 25 girls. One child, who fell ill at the last minute had to be replaced on the list; he did not survive the Holocaust.

The State Department consular staff in Germany helped the Krauses, who traveled with the children to Berlin to receive their visas. They sailed from Hamburg, Germany, on May 23, 1939, on the SS President Harding, arriving in New York Harbor on June 3, 1939.

Upon reaching the United States, the children traveled to Collegeville, Pennsylvania, where they stayed in a summer camp, Brith Sholomville. They studied English, played American games, and wrote letters to their families back in Europe.

Some Jewish organizations worried that Brith Sholom’s private rescue effort was not subjected to the same bureaucratic oversight that protected orphans and other vulnerable children in the United States. (And these groups likely resented the large amount of money that Brith Sholom had been able to spend to rescue fifty children.) A representative from the Department of Labor’s Children’s Bureau toured Brith Sholomville, and found that, while the situation was unusual, the children were treated well and in good health.

After several months at Brith Sholomville, some of the children were reunited with their families, who had managed to obtain US immigration visas and make it to the United States. Others were placed with foster families while they waited and hoped that their family members would escape Europe. The Krauses took two of the children into their own home, caring for them until after the war, when they were reunited with their parents. All of the fifty children reunited with at least one parent.

Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, and the members of Brith Sholom, did not possess any information about the Nazi persecution of Jews that was not readily available to every American. Yet they devised a plan, gathered paperwork, raised money, and traveled to Europe to rescue fifty Jewish children. Most Americans opposed this kind of action—67% of Americans polled in January 1939 opposed a bill in the US Congress to admit refugee children—but for the fifty children and their families, the Krauses were true rescuers.

Watch Eleanor & Gilbert: A Couple’s Mission, part of the Behind Every Name animated video series.