CENTOS was founded in April 1924 by Jewish activists trying to help children who became orphaned in the aftermath of World War I. It was a result of integrations of hundreds of smaller regional institutions, mostly focused on caring for Jewish orphans. It had nine regional committees in addition to its headquarters. It was affiliated with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which provided it with financial support. It also received support from Polish central and local governments. Another major source of income came from individual donors, estimated at numbering between 40,000 to 50,000. The first chairman of CENTOS was Polish politician and social activist,. Major activist of the interwar period included Witold Wiesenberg, Maks Schaff, Anzelm Halpern and Józef Kohn. CENTOS provided aid to disadvantaged families, and run a number of orphanages, schools and clinics; it also organized summer and winter holidays for children from poor families. It also published several monthly magazines for social workers, teachers, and other professionals involved in child care, two Yiddish-language ones and Polish-language "Przegląd Społeczny". Scholars and activists who wrote for them included Stefania Wilczyńska; Wilczyńska would also work for CENTOS as an inspector in the late 1930s. Another author who published in those outlets was Janusz Korczak, whose Warsaw orphanage, with which Wilczyńska was also affiliated, was also supported by CENTOS. CENTOS was present in the entire Second Polish Republic, but it was most active around Warsaw and Lwów provinces. In 1928 out of about 4500 orphans it its care, the two committees responsible for those respective regions took care of about 1500 orphans, with the committees responsible for the seven remaining regions taking care of the remaining 1500 orphans. CENTOS is estimated to have employed at least 1,000 people. In the 1930s CENTOS attempted to provide aid for the Germans Jews, who were facing increasing discrimination in Nazi Germany. It is estimated that in 1938 approximately 15,000 children received aid from CENTOS, with more than half of those children depending on CENTOS infrastructure like orphanages. That year, CENTOS affiliated institutions included 26 orphanages, 75 day-care facilities, 3 clinics and over 30 holiday resorts. CENTOS functioned in over 200 Polish municipalities.
CENTOS continued to operate following the occupation of Poland by Germany in WWII. In 1940 CENTOS was still active in 74 locations in the General Government. In 1940-1941 CENTOS directors included Adolf Bergman and. Most notably, CENTOS was highly active in the Warsaw ghetto during The Holocaust in Poland. There were 20 day centers in this ghetto to look after thousands of children. CENTOS was also present in the Brzesko ghetto along with Jewish Social Self-Aid, and Committee for the Aid to Refugees and the Poor. It helped about 130 children in 1940. According to one estimate, without CENTOS, Jewish orphans in the ghettos would have starved within few months at most. The CENTOS was also an active part of the Jewish resistance in the ghettos, not only active in its official capacity of providing food and shelter, but clandestinely, also helping to provide cover for resistance operatives, smuggling weapons into the ghetto and helping to maintain communication and smuggling channels between Jewish and Polish resistance. CENTOS was not the only Jewish humanitarian aid organization that tried to operate in the early years of German occupation; others included the Jewish Social Self-Aid and the Jews Aid Agency. Most of the children in care of CENTOS perished in the Nazi German concentration camps in the final stage of The Holocaust, following the liquidations of Nazi ghettos and relocation of the survivors to the concentration camps. Many CENTOS personnel, including Korczak and Wilczyńska, accompanied to children to the camps and perished there as well.
