The Selvino children were a group of approximately 810 Jewish children orphaned by the Holocaust, rescued after World War II from ghettos and concentration camps and housed in a former Fascist children's home called Sciesopoli in the Alpine town of Selvino, Italy. The facility had been constructed in the 1930s as a "sports palace" or gymnasium and training centre for athletes. There, the children were allowed to recover physically, mentally, and spiritually from their ordeal, while being instructed both in the general education they had missed during their imprisonment, as well as in their heritage of Judaism and Judaic culture, in preparation for their later relocation to the still British-ruled Mandatory Palestine as part of the Bricha immigration programme. The house was run by members of the Jewish Brigade, a Palestinian Jewish unit of the British Army stationed in Northern Italy under Moshe Zeiri, along with the generous help of many Italian citizens. From early 1947 to May 1948, when the State of Israel was declared, Amalia (Mania) Schoeps was director of Sciesopoli.