- [Narrator] After the Germans occupied Northern France,
Susan Hilsenrath and her brother Joseph
had managed to make their way from Versailles to Vichy,
and the Chateau des Morelles,
a group home for Jewish children who had been
separated from their parents, financed by
the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
- They wanted to send us to school,
to the public school in France,
but the people in the village wouldn't let those children
from the Chateau Morelles mix with their children.
We kept writing to our parents all the time.
- [Narrator] Their father had managed to get himself,
his wife, and youngest boy to the United States,
and was now feverishly trying to gather
Susan and Joseph to them as well.
- He made a pest of himself at the State Department.
He wrote them letters, begged.
I have to be so thankful.
Without him, we would never have made it.
- One day the director of the children's home,
she called me to her office and I was really scared,
because only when you had problems
did you go to that director's office.
Then she was sitting behind her desk and she said
to me, "Susie, you are going to go to the United States."
Our parents had found us
- [Narrator] Susan and Joseph's passage
had been arranged and paid for by the New York-based
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
- My brother and I went to Marseilles on the train,
and there we met like 50 children that were all going to go
on the Serpa Pinto from Lisbon to come to the United States.
(soft thoughtful music)
They put all of the 50 children in the bottom one,
the lowest deck of the ship and in the front of the ship,
and we were all in one room.
And we had these double-decker and triple-decker beds,
and they told us we weren't allowed
to mingle with the crowd.
(soft thoughtful music) (water sloshing)
Finally it was time to get to the United States,
and they told all the children
that the next morning at 6:00,
we were going to pass the Statue of Liberty.
Of course, we had learned
what the Statue of Liberty was all about.
So they told us to be on deck to see it.
At exactly 6:00, that fog went up like this,
like the curtain at an opera, or the concert,
or the play, went up like that.
And right there, just as it was going up,
was the Statue of Liberty.
- The fog lifted. (crying)
And there it was.
After all, (crying) it's even worse now,
after all these years.
To taste freedom, to, (coughing)
it was just remarkable, and the effects,
apparently has never left me.
I realized that I didn't have to worry about getting killed,
which is, was part of your being.
And that you're gonna be able to live,
and grow old and have a life.
(cheerful patriotic music)
- [Reporter] A cargo of innocents from embattled Europe.
Arriving in New York aboard the Portuguese liner
Serpa Pinto, these youngest refugees are originally
from Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Spain,
but the war has made them wanderers.
- So we had to go to Ellis Island,
and there we found out everything that we needed
to know about the United States.
We learned about food, and we learned that they had
this white bread, and we could squash it up and push it,
and make a little ball out of it.
You could bite into it, and it was so good.
And then they told us it was called Wonder Bread,
and we were so happy to be eating it.
(children chattering)
The next thing we learned is that the children
in the United States had candy
that you could eat all day long.
And was, just stayed in your mouth all day long.
And then we of course learned that it was chewing gum.
It's just so exciting, because we knew we had come
to the place where we were going to be
reunited with our parents.
- [Narrator] Susan and Joseph's father had been at the pier
in Lower Manhattan to welcome them to America,
but their mother was not with him.
They did not see her until they arrived
at the family's new home in Washington, DC.
- When we arrived, I expected some emotional response,
but she just lay there and barely even smiled.
And my father explained to me that she was mentally ill.
- I don't talk about it.
I couldn't understand that there was nothing between us.
I just go, I said, "Here I'm your child and I'm back,"
and she just didn't understand.
Eventually she ended up in the hospital.
- We don't know what happened to her.
While my father was here in the United States
she was in Germany with my younger brother.
They were alone for about four to six months.
(dark ominous music) (German soldiers shouting)
When I left her, she was perfectly normal,
and I really don't know what happened.
I asked frequently if she was beaten or traumatized,
but I never got an answer, not from her certainly.
And my father just didn't wanna talk about it,
and she never recovered.
Hi, this is Lynn Novick.
Thanks for watching that excerpt
from our film "The U.S. and the Holocaust"
which explores the story of how
the American people grappled with
one of the greatest humanitarian crises
of the 20th century.
Here are some more clips from the film
and you can watch the entire series
on the PBS Video app or at PBS.org