Lev Student Research Fellow Alexia M. Orengo-Green presents on child refugees to Latin America during the Holocaust

On March 5, 2025, Alexia M. Orengo-Green, PhD candidate in History at USC and the 2024 Beth and Arthur Lev Student Research Fellow at the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, presented her research on the overlooked agency of Jewish child refugees who fled Nazi Germany and resettled in Latin America during the Holocaust. Drawing on 30 survivor testimonies from the Visual History Archive (VHA), Orengo-Green explored the experiences and memories of children who arrived in Argentina, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Uruguay. She argues that these children were not passive observers of migration and displacement, but instead active participants in migration, who shaped their families’ acculturation in their host countries.

While existing Holocaust scholarship has largely focused on adult experiences or formal rescue operations oif children like the Kindertransport, Orengo-Green explained, her research centers children’s experiences — experiences often missing or minimized in historical narratives. She analyzes not only what survivors recall, but how they remember and convey their stories decades later.

She began the lecture with a 1940 photograph from the VHA testimony of Eva Wertheimer, who fled Nazi Germany with her family at the age of nine. The family’s initial stop was Paraguay, before they clandestinely crossed the border into Argentina. The photo shows Eva’s parents in formal German attire at her sister’s wedding, starkly contrasted against the modest wooden kitchen where the celebration took place. Eva, reflecting on the image as an adult, referred to her own parents as “primitive” for clinging to outdated customs in a radically different environment. This reversal – where she identifies her parents’ customs as “primitive” instead of referring to the host population that way – illuminates a core theme of Orengo-Green’s work: the intergenerational negotiation of cultural identity and adaptability, with children often at the forefront of change.

Orengo-Green noted that by the end of World War II, more than 120,000 European Jews had taken refuge in Latin America. While some countries, such as Argentina and Brazil, became permanent homes, others – like Cuba and Puerto Rico – served as temporary waypoints. Her research contributes to the literature of other scholars studying Holocaust refugees in Latin America, but departs by foregrounding children’s perspectives and their roles in navigating language, race, and social interaction in their new homes.

Orengo-Green argued that language became as a central avenue for the development of children’s agency. Children frequently became linguistic and cultural intermediaries between their parents and their new environments. In a clip from his VHA testimony, José Mayer, who arrived in Buenos Aires at age eight, recalled how he quickly picked up Spanish “in the streets,” even as his parents remained largely within their German-speaking migrant German Jewish community. His parents’ struggle with language, compounded by their plans to eventually emigrate to the United States, left José as the primary bridge between the family and Argentine society. Rather than learning Spanish, many refugees were focused on learning English, revealing they didn’t view Argentina as their final destination. There was an ever-present tension between preserving their identity and acculturating. Orengo-Green went on to note a pattern that José exemplified: child survivors often adopted a Hispanicized version of their names and often kept them even after moving to the United States. Over time, José identified more closely with the culture of his host country than with his German-Jewish roots.

This theme recurred across other testimonies as well. In Cuba, Ingrid Altman recalled attending a bilingual school that prepared her for eventual migration to the U.S., but also revealed social restrictions imposed by her refugee community. Although she had Cuban friends, her parents discouraged deeper relationships. Altman remarked that had she dated a Cuban boy, she would have been considered “trash,” exposing how some refugee families imported racial and class prejudices from Europe. Orengo-Green highlighted how children often found themselves caught between their parents’ inherited worldviews and the more fluid and flexible possibilities available to them in their new surroundings.

Racial difference was another striking dimension of children’s refugee experiences. Many children encountered people of African or Indigenous descent for the first time in Latin America, and their testimonies often reveal moments of shock or uncertainty. In one testimony clip, David Ackermann remembers staring at a well-dressed Black man in a port city – an encounter that his parents quickly interrupted. His only knowledge of Black people came from books, and the discomfort expressed in his recollection exemplifies how European racial assumptions shaped refugee perceptions. Orengo-Green argued that although these ideas were not always malicious, they reflected broader colonial ideologies that continued to influence how refugee children interpreted their surroundings.

Children also bore significant responsibilities, Orengo-Green asserted. Beyond their role as interpreters, they were sometimes expected to advocate on behalf of their families. In another example from the VHA, Eva Eisemann recounts how, at thirteen, she was sent to petition the First Lady of Uruguay to secure a visa for her grandmother. Fluent in Spanish and perceived as non-threatening due to her age, Eva successfully delivered flowers and spoke with the First Lady, who made a call that ensured her grandmother’s safe entry. This story, like many others in Orengo-Green’s research, highlights how children’s “perceived innocence” became a tool for survival, leveraged by families navigating bureaucratic and linguistic barriers.

Throughout the lecture, Orengo-Green emphasized that Latin America was not merely a stopover point. It was a vital and transformative site in the lives of thousands of Jewish children. Their experiences shaped their families’ survival and acculturation, often in profound and underrecognized ways. As she concluded, Orengo-Green called for a more inclusive approach to Holocaust history – one that takes seriously the voices of children and the geographies of the Global South. She argued that children are an essential and important part of the history of the Holocaust.

During the wide-ranging Q&A following the lecture, Orengo-Green addressed a myriad of questions. When asked about gender differences, she observed that girls often spoke more openly about relationships and social dynamics, while boys emphasized economic responsibility, sometimes leaving school to support their families. She also noted the significance of the age of the child refugee, some forgetting their native language entirely, others becoming lifelong intermediaries for their families. She discussed the other sources she’s using to complement her work with survivor testimonies, including diaries and memoirs.

Read more about Alexia M. Orengo-Green here.