At the eve of the Second World War, an estimated 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe. While 10,000 of them escaped to Britain in the Kindertransport, only some 500 found a new home in France. Here they attempted to begin again—but their refuge would all too soon become a trap.

For the first time, Laura Hobson Faure brings to life the experiences of these children, and the Jewish and non-Jewish organizations who helped them. Drawing on survivors’ testimonies as well as children’s diaries, letters, drawings, songs, and poems, Who Will Rescue Us? re-creates their complex journeys, including how some of them eventually found safety in America.

Hobson Faure paints a moving portrait of these children and their escape, uncovering their agency in the flight from Nazism—and knits together the network of the many who aided them along the way.

Lau­ra Hob­son Fau­re is a pro­fes­sor at the Panth.on-Sorbonne Uni­ver­si­ty-Paris 1, where she holds the chair of Mod­ern Jew­ish His­to­ry and is a mem­ber of the Cen­ter for Social His­to­ry.