Alfred Brauner (3 July 1910[1] – 1 December 2002[2]) was an Austrian-born French scholar, author and sociologist, who was a volunteer in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War[4][5] and an Austrian Resistance member during Occupied France.

[6] He has devoted his life to educating refugee, displaced and maladjusted children, participating in the welcoming of Jewish child survivors of the Kristallnacht and of the Nazi concentration camps of Buchenwald and Auschwitz from 1939 to 1946.

[11] Born on 3 July 1910 in Saint-Mandé to Austro-Hungarian parents spending two years in France for professional purpose, Alfred Brauner grew up in Vienna, Austro-Hungary.

[20] During the Spanish Civil War, he volunteered in the International Brigades and was placed by Luigi Longo at the head of a committee to help evacuees or refugees, because of his previous experience with at-risk youth.

[23][24] In 1937, Alfred Brauner and his wife Fritzi discovered the trauma of child victims of war after receiving a set of drawings from a class in Barcelona.

[25] Their project to publish drawings and testimonies of children in war received the support of Ilya Ehrenburg and Romain Rolland who "regarded this collection as of considerable educational, historical and human interest.

[26][27][28] Brauner's intention was to analyze the problems posed in working with children traumatized by their experiences and by separation from their families, with the aim of adapting them to a new life and preparing them for integration into France.

"[22] In 1940, Alfred Brauner and his wife Fritzi attempted to hide about 10,000 children's drawings when the German army invaded Paris, but almost all were discovered and destroyed by the Gestapo.

[6][11] With members of the Austrian Freedom Front arriving every morning at a specific time, Alfred Brauner decided to open a German Language class as a cover from Gestapo.

[6] In 1945, the Brauners helped welcoming 444 surviving boys from the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, aged 8 to 16 years old,[29] in the scope of the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) in Ecouis, France.

[29] Alfred Brauner was the ambassador of the association Children Refugees of the World, as well as the only non-physician Chairman of the French Society of Psychopathology of Expression and Art Therapy.