In November 1938, the Comité d’Assistance aux Enfants Juifs Refugiés (Assistance Committee for Jewish Refugee Children, CAEJR) was founded in Brussels. The organisation took care of the entry into the country and the livelihood of the children who reached Belgium with the Kindertransports. The CAEJR was created from the Comité d’Assistance aux Réfugiés Juifs (Assistance Committee for Jewish Refugees, CARJ), which had been in existence since 1933. Founded by Max Gottschalk and other public figures, the committee supported families and individuals who had fled from Germany.
The CAEJR was run by volunteer women and first chaired by Renée de Becker-Remy and later Marguerite Goldschmidt-Brodsky. The office was located at 2 Rue Joseph Dupont in Brussels. Refugees from Germany, usually women, were also volunteering for this aid work.
The organisation of the Kindertransports proved to be a massive task. The CAEJR was the first point of contact for the Jewish welfare institutions in the German Reich. They made suggestions to the committee about which children were to be part of a transport. Parents and communities often also contacted the Brussels address directly.
The Committee then began checking each child, to see whether there was the possibility of admitting them into Belgium. The Belgian state only authorised temporary residence. Furthermore, Belgian authorities did not take over any financial burdens as a result of the Kindertransports.
Some children had relatives in Belgium who agreed to support them. If this was not the case, foster parents were sought for the children. Sometimes members of the CAEJR or their families could personally take care of the children.
The CAEJR worked closely with the Belgian Red Cross. Staff members accompanied the children on their journey from Germany to Belgium.
The children’s transfer to other countries took place in close cooperation with the children’s aid organisations there, such as the British Movement for the Care of Children from Germany.
The CAEJR also founded homes for the children whose stay in Belgium was initially not guaranteed either by relatives or by a foster family, as the Général Bernheim and Herbert Speyer homes.
After the invasion of German troops and the occupation of the country, the CAEJR was dissolved. Many members of the committee managed to leave for the United States. In October 1940 they succeeded in transferring the responsibility for the approximately 100 children from the two homes who had escaped to southern France to a Swiss aid organisation. AP