During World War II, an untold number of Jewish children were sheltered by Gentiles, often in orphanages and convents. In 1946, Yitzḥak Halevi Herzog—a Polish-born rabbi who grew up in England and France and served as the chief rabbi of Ireland before leaving for the Land of Israel—traveled to Europe on a quest to find these children, whose caretakers and adoptive parents weren’t always ready to give them up. Herzog, who would later become Israel’s first Ashkenazi chief rabbi, returned to the British-ruled Palestine six months later with 500 children in tow. Shai Ben-Ari writes:

After the Allied victory in Europe in May 1945, Rabbi Herzog maintained his focus on the rescue of the continent’s surviving Jews. By his own estimate, at the end of the war, some 10,000 Jewish children were held in secret by Catholic institutions and non-Jewish families who had bravely taken them in for their own safety.

Before he began the search, [Herzog] stopped at the Vatican, where he sought the help of Pope Pius XII. The rabbi came with a message of thanks for the crucial intervention of Catholic institutions in saving young Jewish lives, but also insisted that the children now be released. . . . While Pius XII did not issue the sweeping public declaration the rabbi was hoping for, the Vatican was indeed helpful in obtaining the release of many of the children.

During his European trip, Herzog visited France, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, England, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Ireland. Much of the work he and his team faced was bureaucratic: they drew up updated lists of children with the help of the respective governments and local community institutions, and went about seeking Jewish organizations with the authority to assume legal guardianship. Once the initial information was collected, it was often a matter of searching through individual villages and monasteries, while using the lists as guides. Volunteers from sympathetic organizations, both Jewish and non-Jewish, were instrumental in this effort.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.