Hunted, Starved, Orphaned, Saved: The Odyssey of the Tehran Children

Echoes of Innocence: The Odyssey of the Tehran Children

By: Amil Imani

On 18 February 1943, a train pulled into Atlit, on the coast of Mandatory-Palestine. It carried some 861 children and 369 adults. Local residents were waiting for them with candy and small gifts. The children had been travelling for years and across thousands of miles. Many had lost a parent on the way, and some did not know whether anyone in their family was still alive.

History remembers them as the Tehran Children. Their path to safety ran through Siberia, Central Asia, Iran, the Indian Ocean and the Sinai, and it deserves to be remembered.

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Soviet Union entered from the east soon after. Some 300,000 Polish