Archival Audio, Red Cross public service announcement:
How do you do, Miss Lane?
Hello.
I have your Red Cross membership card for you.
Oh, thank you very much. This makes me a member for another year now, doesn’t it?
That’s right.
And here’s your button.
Thank you.
Those of us who work in pictures try our best to show the happiness of the audience. It’s a sadness, as well as a sadness that comes into the lives of the characters we play. We work with make believe drama. But today, and every day, real life drama goes on around us.
The kind of drama that tears the heart. The great human dramas of disaster.
Drama without an audience, and without applause.
And yet, without fanfare, the unsung heroes and heroines of the American Red Cross come to the rescue. They lift up hearts that are crushed and restore homes that are shattered. Won’t you join the American Red Cross and become one of these merciful workers? Your dollars play a major role. Will you do your part and put your name in the great supporting cast?
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After World War II, American Jewish organizations like HIAS – the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, National Council of Jewish Women, and the United Service for New Americans provided critical resources to give medicine, food, and housing to displaced persons, often working in partnership with nondenominational relief organizations like the Red Cross, and in tandem with the U.S. military. The work was dangerous, and aid workers often ran directly into the line of fire.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees also gained entry into the United States, Canada, Australia, Mandatory Palestine, and other communities around the world, due in large part to the advocacy and efforts of these aid organizations to break past restrictive immigration quotas.
From the American Jewish Historical Society, this is The Wreckage: Year Zero. I’m your host, Rebecca Naomi Jones. This week’s episode, The Aid Workers, begins in 1944, as the U.S. military ramped up medical relief efforts ahead of the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Archival Audio, Medical Service in the Invasion of Normandy: “Vast preparations were being made. Huge quantities of material and supplies collected – guns, half-tracks, bombs, ambulances – yes, ambulances – for the midst of all this preparation and this training for destruction there went on an opposite preparation. Preparation for the business of saving life and preserving limb, institution of easing pain through the endless English months of war games of maneuvers. Medical corpsmen of the ground forces worked with air units. They grew tough and inured to battle conditions. They learn the prime importance of speed. As the day drew nearer and the grand strategy was mapped, the Medical Corps drafted its plans to fit.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Joining us is Gemma Birnbaum, executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society.
Gemma Birnbaum: Aid workers played a critical role during World War II. For much of the war and in prior conflicts, it was actually military personnel that took on the biggest role in providing humanitarian aid. This was really about logistics and using the networks and people power already established by the U. S. military, and that created a simplified network for providing humanitarian aid to impacted civilians.
Soldiers already had the access to provide food, other supplies to people who were being impacted, just you know, by the very worst consequences of war, some of which include fears of famine, lack of shelter, and the like. Aid work was also very dangerous, particularly at the height of the German Blitzkrieg, which was defined as the use of heavy, rapid, concentrated, overwhelming force. Other heavy types of bombing, such as the Allied assault on Dresden, which was later described as apocalyptic by those survivors, that type of thing.
This danger is also why it was absolutely critical for aid organizations to work in lockstep with the American military, which would help to limit casualties.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After the liberation of Europe, the need for humanitarian aid only grew. This led to an unprecedented scale of relief efforts, as the Allied nations sought to care for the millions of displaced persons and other civilians who had survived the war.
Gemma Birnbaum: There were still the basic needs that remained the same. That included providing food, clothing, and shelter to those who survived. In the liberation and postwar period, however, there’s greater need for aid organizations to assist refugees in finding new places to live. So after World War II, Europe went through what was almost certainly the most extensive and prolonged use of the military in civil affairs in global history, I mean, the effort is just massive. And so you’re talking about the development and implementation of a multinational relief system that relies on everyone from the highest ranking to the enlisted private, to that volunteer relief worker. At a basic level, it’s as if an entire continent had to be project managed to be rebuilt.
So you needed a reliable pipeline of food, you needed education and schooling, shelter and homes, and entire government systems needed to be reestablished. Also keep in mind that the war in Asia was still going on, but once Japan surrendered a few months later, aid workers accompanied occupying forces into the Pacific theater as well.
One other thing to note is that relief workers didn’t just help with the damage from World War II. So while all of this was still happening, there were still things like natural disasters happening where volunteers were needed. I think sometimes people today feel really overwhelmed at all of these big, scary, world shattering events happening at once, and that’s a valid feeling, but the reality is this has always been the way in times of crisis and in peace.
The world doesn’t stop in times of war, and there are still things like hurricanes and floods and earthquakes where relief workers need to be deployed.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: HIAS was one the leading Jewish aid organizations to mobilize in the aftermath. Founded in 1881, HIAS had done extensive work in the years between World War I and II to establish a worldwide network of other Jewish organizations. Their goal – to provide immigration assistance to persecuted Jews seeking entry into the United States, Canada, Australia, China, and South America. Called “HICEM” [note for Rebecca – this is pronounced “HI SEM”] – this European relief arm was the combined efforts of HIAS, the Paris-based Jewish Colonisation Association, and EmigDirect, which was based in Berlin. There were offices across Europe, South and Central America, and South Asia.
More aid organizations, such as the American Joint Distribution Committee, joined HICEM’s efforts. As the Third Reich aggressively pursued its Final Solution to the Jewish question and accelerated the mass incarceration and murder of the Jewish people, HICEM managed to save 250,000 men, women, and children.
Gemma Birnbaum: HICEM got the majority of its funding from the American Joint Distribution Committee. And the Joint was also doing relief work of its own, and even secretly funneled money through their Swiss office to Jews trapped in the Polish ghettos. So when war broke out in September 1939, there were already all of these pre-established offices and networks.
HICEM’s main priority was finding funding and places where Jewish refugees could be relocated. And that’s increasingly difficult, as more and more restrictions are placed on immigration. Some of the HICEM employees did ultimately perish in the war, which is just this really awful irony.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After the war, HICEM was dissolved, and HIAS continued its operations in the largest mobilization in their history. They worked to resettle roughly 150,000 people to 330 communities around the world, including in the United States, Canada, Australia, and South America, and after its founding in 1948, the state of Israel.
Gemma Birnbaum: Now this was somewhat miraculous, because it’s not like the majority of these DPs had any kind of documentation or papers. Birth certificates, passports, all of these things that many of us take for granted, they didn’t have. And so a lot of what HIAS and other Jewish organizations are doing is helping these undocumented people.
United Service for New Americans was founded in 1946 and they have the explicit goal of resettling Jewish refugees in Europe. USNA was the result of a merger between the National Council of Jewish Women’s Service to Foreign Born Department and the National Refugee Service.
And they would operate for around eight years and then eventually merged with HIAS in 1954.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Jewish women were at the forefront of humanitarian aid work, and organizations like Hadassah and the National Council of Jewish Women had spent decades providing medical care, immigration assistance, education, and hunger relief. On the home front, women of means of all faiths encouraged others to support these organizations, and celebrities like the actress Priscilla Lane contributed in the form of PSA’s.
The National Council of Jewish Women was instrumental in helping to resettle refugees, both in their involvement in the creation of USNA, and after the war through their Port and Dock program. The program was originally created in 1903 by their founder, Hannah G. Solomon, and was designed to give young immigrant women who entered the United States support and resources to protect them from falling victim to exploitation like sweatshop labor and indentured servitude.
The Port and Dock program helped resettle Holocaust survivors through the 1940s and beyond.
Gemma Birnbaum: After World War II, the National Council of Jewish Women focused their efforts on reuniting displaced persons with family members, and took a particular interest in helping child refugees. Membership grew very significantly after World War II, and they shifted some of their efforts to their Ship-A-Box program, which sent educational materials and toys and you know, anything a kid would need.
And they send these to daycare centers, primary schools. Even to people’s homes around the country and the world, um, most specifically in Israel, France, and multiple countries in Africa. Historically in the United States, women have also been the creators and advocates for social work as a career, and it’s in big part because of Jewish women’s social workers advocacy that the post war U.S. saw such a significant change to its social welfare programs, and that included the establishment of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Hadassah: the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, was founded in 1912 by activist Henrietta Szold. Born in 1860 in Baltimore, MD, Szold was the oldest of 8 daughters, and a pioneer for women’s rights. In 1893, she started the first American night school that provided English language instruction and job training for Russian Jewish immigrants, and in the immediate years that followed, developed a vision for a Jewish state that would serve as a cornerstone for a burgeoning Zionist movement.
Gemma Birnbaum: As early as 1933, Hadassah established Youth Aliyah, a program that helped get Jewish children out of Nazi Germany and into the British Mandate of Palestine. And they continued this through the duration of the Holocaust. Of course with increasing difficulty as Great Britain continued to put more and more severe restrictions on Jewish migration to the territory.
Now, Hadassah, keep in mind, is very focused on medical work and aid, and in the United States, they coordinated efforts to establish blood banks, ship medical supplies to Europe and Mandatory Palestine, they even opened a teaching hospital on Mount Scopus in Mandatory Palestine in 1939. After the war, Hadassah accelerated these efforts with the ultimate goal of bringing Jewish refugees in medical care to Palestine.
So this work continued at a swift pace for about two years, and then in late 1947, the UN issued its partition plan. The partition plan dictated that the establishment of separate Jewish and Arab enclaves must happen within a year. Violence almost immediately broke out.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: Tensions between Jewish, Arab, and British forces in Mandatory Palestine increased, and Hadassah’s relief workers faced additional security risks throughout the region. As a result of implementing the Partition Plan, Arab forces created a blockade around Hadassah Hospital, and on April 13, 1948, a convoy of Hadassah medical staff who were attempting to reach the hospital were attacked.
78 Jewish hospital staff, medical students, and patients were killed in the massacre, and Hadassah personnel lost access to the teaching hospital. In the aftermath, British soldiers oversaw the evacuation of 700 patients from the hospital,
Following the attack, the Jewish Agency asserted that the ambush was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and Hadassah charged that the British had aided Arab forces. In response, the Arab forces claimed that it was impossible to distinguish between humanitarian convoys and the military. Ultimately, the Red Cross intervened at the request of the Jewish Agency, and after a year of investigations and diplomatic talks, an armistice agreement was signed with Jordan. The agreement demilitarized the hospital and kept it under Israeli management, while the rest of Mount Scopus and East Jerusalem would belong to Jordan.
For many Jewish Americans, the Hadassah Convoy Massacre and other high-profile incidents galvanized skeptics to embrace the creation of a Jewish state.
Gemma Birnbaum: Prior to World War II, many American Jews had really complicated feelings about Zionism and the creation of a Jewish state. Now this dates back much farther back than World War II, so in modern history, what we’re really talking about is Zionism as a reaction to a few major very public anti-Jewish events, and this included the Russian and Eastern oppression of the late 19th century, the Dreyfus affair in France.
The movement was founded by Theodor Herzl, and the Zionist movement was officially born in 1897. So you fast forward to the early 20th century, and there was deep debate within American Jewish communities and organizations about whether there is a need for a Jewish state.
There’s some wealthy philanthropists, like the banker and businessman, Jacob Schiff who saw Zionism as a threat to what they considered their vision of the American dream and Americanization for Jews. It’s also played into these already fomenting ideas that Jews have this like dual loyalty, the pervasive antisemitic idea that Jews are not to be trusted because they are only loyal to their religion and not their nation.
The skepticism of Zionism started to change after the horrors of the Holocaust became more well known, and it did have an impact on American Jewish identity. Between 1945 and 1948, in spite of the restrictions on immigration still in place by the British, there are a number of Holocaust survivors who choose Palestine as their new home, and they’re often reuniting with relatives there.
So there’s people like Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. He went from somewhat indifferent to a Jewish state to very much in support, later becoming chairman of the United Jewish Appeal in the years following his resignation from the Truman administration. He actually made humanitarian trips out there, visited Holocaust survivors who are now living in certain neighborhoods and became a real advocate.
By 1948, Israel’s existence is no longer theoretical, but a reality. And then very quickly, war breaks out, it’s chaos, eventually, Israel does prevail, and this galvanized a number of American Jews to not just pay attention to Israel, but to give it support in the form of financial contributions, aid work, and so on. Rebecca Naomi Jones: Longstanding practices of aid work and of mutual aid–deeply embedded in American Jewish identity for many decades–were amplified during and after World War II. Historically, these efforts had never been limited to only Jewish communities nor even only in the United States.
A complex, and evolving, global network of aid organizations built upon these cooperative efforts to assist millions of people in multiple countries in the decade following the Holocaust.
Gemma Birnbaum: Aid workers are some of the bravest people to serve during and after World War II. Even today, aid workers run towards danger to help others survive it, and organizations like HIAS and Hadassah are still doing this work today. National Council of Jewish Women still operates today. And this is both a uniquely Jewish experience in the post war period because of the targeting of Jews during the Holocaust. And so there’s this poignancy that it is Jews helping fellow Jews.
But the tradition of aid work goes far beyond the Jewish community. And so, you know, in 1946 you had the creation of Heifer International, which was originally founded as a Christian organization.
It’s now non denominational. And, you know, they work to fight famine by giving people livestock and agriculture and training on how to care for those assets and provide long term, sustainable relief. UNICEF was also founded in 1946 by the United Nations. Specifically they helped provide relief to children who were suffering from hunger, and needed medical aid.
Helping people matters. What we do as individuals matters. And I do firmly believe that as, as the Talmud says, whoever saves a single life is considered by scripture to have saved the world. And if everyone lived their lives with that in mind, imagine what could be different.
Rebecca Naomi Jones: After World War II, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became the foundation for international refugee law. Written by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, the declaration was accepted by the General Assembly in Paris in December of 1948, after three years of committee work.
Archival Audio – Eleanor Roosevelt Speaks to UN General Assembly: “I’m going to read you the Universal Declaration of Human Rights now therefore the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations to the end that every individual in every organ of society
keeping this declaration constantly in mind shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures national and international to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance.”
Rebecca Naomi Jones: From the American Jewish Historical Society, I’m Rebecca Naomi Jones. This episode was written by executive director Gemma R. Birnbaum. Recording, sound design, and mixing were done at Sound Lounge. Archival material is courtesy of the collections of the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Library of Congress, the United Nations Audiovisual Library, and the U.S. National Archives. Special thanks to our colleagues at the National Council of Jewish Women, HIAS, and Hadassah.
For episode transcripts, additional resources, and links to the collections featured in this episode, visit ajhs.org/podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, which helps others discover our series.
