Aid and Rescue: Organizations

HICEM and HIAS

Among the critically important organizations helping Jews, HICEM was an umbrella group formed in 1927 by the merging of three groups including the well-known HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) which was based in New York, managed immigration to America, and was the main source of HICEM’s financial support. They had offices in Europe and the Americas as well as the Far East and helped refugees in the process and preparation for emigration. After the Germans invaded France, its office was moved to Lisbon, Portugal - considered a neutral country - along with the offices of the JDC and the American Friends.

See 2014.1.374, 2014.1.376, 2014.1.378, 2015.2.183, 2019.2.241.

The American Friends Service Committee and the Unitarians

Apart from the Red Cross, a number of faith-based Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) operated throughout Europe during this period of time along with Jewish organizations: the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC-Quakers), Protestant and Catholic organizations, and the Unitarians; all were part of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR), which ultimately became part of the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration or UNRRA.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) gave Quakers the opportunity to serve rather than be combatants during wartime. It assisted refugees escaping from European countries such as Germany and France, and for its work helping refugees it received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948.

See 2019.2.231.

The Unitarians Waitstill and Martha Sharp were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for helping Jewish refugees in Marseilles, Lisbon and Prague - the second and third recipients of this award in the United States to be so honored.

See 2022.1.32.

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (“The Joint”) and Other NGOs

Most nations did very little to rescue or assist the Jews of Europe attempting to escape the Nazi scourge. Those countries that did take Jewish émigrés often placed severe restrictions on the number of prospective candidates. In the case of the United States, antisemitic State Department personnel made certain that the number of Jews admitted was kept artificially low, even lower than the “quota” would allow. The burden of aiding and rescuing refugee Jews fell on a limited number of Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and individuals.

The principal mission of the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) since its inception had been to deliver aid to Jews in distress, usually in the context of war and discrimination. During the Nazi era the “Joint” focused mainly on helping Jewish stateless refugees emigrate to countries which could provide sanctuary. The organization HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) would help Jews once this mission had been accomplished and refugees reached safety. Apart from the Red Cross, a number of other Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) operated throughout Europe during this period of time along with Jewish organizations: the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC-Quakers), Protestant and Catholic organizations, and the Unitarians: all were part of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR), created after the Evian Conference of 1938 and subsequently absorbed by the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration or UNRRA in 1944. The AFSC received a Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts assisting refugees escape from Germany, France and other countries. As mentioned above, the Unitarians Waitstill and Martha Sharp helped Jewish refugees in Marseilles, Lisbon and Prague.

For UNRRA and the AJDC, the end of WW2 meant attending to the extraordinary needs of Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons camps throughout Europe. The Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization (PCIRO) was created in 1946 and Joint field workers were under this organization. In 1948, the PCIRO became the IRO. The UN took over operations in 1951 as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The last DP camp in Europe, Foehrenwald, was closed in 1957.

See 2012.1.209, 2012.1.210, 2012.1.211, 2012.1.213, 2012.1.232, 2012.1.244ab, 2012.1.249, 2012.1.253, 2012.1.258ab, 2012.1.274, 2014.1.373, 2014.1.375, 2015.2.99, 2015.2.160ab, 2021.1.45, 2022.1.6.

RELICO

Abraham Silberschein was a Polish attorney and labor Zionist. He had relocated to Geneva, Switzerland in 1930 as a representative to the Zionist congress and remained there after the outbreak of WWII. Geneva became a base from which he organized rescue and relief activities through RELICO (Relief Committee for Jewish War Victims), which he founded in 1939 with funding from the World Zionist Congress and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to aid Polish and German Jews persecuted by the Nazis. Silberschein maintained contact and cooperated with other Jewish institutions assisting Jewish war victims: sending food packages and medical supplies, locating family members or helping those who had lost their homes and property. Silberschein was also affiliated with the “Lados Group” supplying forged passports - rescue documents - to Jews caught in the Nazi maelstrom.

Alfred Schwarzbaum was a wealthy Polish businessman from Bedzin who was able to obtain the requisite visas to escape to Switzerland after the German occupation of Poland in 1939. Settling in Lausanne, he began sending food, clothing and financial aid to the beleaguered Jews of Poland. He sent parcels through Lisbon, Turkey and Sweden to their intended recipients. He responded to Jews asking for help with inquiries about family members living in Poland and Germany and provided relief to Jews who had lost their homes or their property. He also worked with Silberschein’s RELICO organization, and like Silberschein, also produced rescue passports for Jews.

See 2014.1.154, 2014.1.155, 2014.1.274, 2015.2.119, 2015.2.120, 2015.2.121, 2015.2.122, 2015.2.125, 2015.2.134, 2015.2.135, 2015.2.139, 2015.2.140.

L'Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants

The OSE (L'Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants) was a humanitarian children’s aid organization providing social and medical assistance to Jewish families in need. After 1933, OSE’s main office was moved from Berlin to Paris, where Jewish children - refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria - were placed in OSE children’s homes in the area. By 1939 more than 200 children had been placed in one of these homes in Paris. OSE also provided social services to foreign Jews living in internment camps such as Gurs and Rivesaltes. OSE attempted to relocate Jewish children from these camps to homes in the unoccupied Vichy region of France where they would be cared for. With the German occupation of the Vichy region in 1942, the OSE mission changed to more clandestine activities: the development of hiding places, the creation of false documents, and smuggling children across the border to Switzerland and Spain. Through the heroic efforts of the OSE, more than 5000 Jewish children were saved from Nazi extermination. OSE’s work continued post-liberation assisting surviving children from Buchenwald find placements in French rehabilitation facilities.

See 2021.1.46a-e (Postcards Sent by Family to Jewish Child Rita Goldstein Sheltered by OSE).

The Kindertransport

Kindertransport refers to the rescue operations approved by the British Parliament bringing 10,000 mostly Jewish children under the age of 17 to Great Britain from Nazi-occupied territories. A number of groups and individuals in Britain and on the Continent worked together to organize these efforts.

See “What They Carried: The Kindertransport” curated collection.

Youth Aliyah

Youth Aliyah was an organization credited with rescuing thousands of children during the Third Reich, resettling Jewish youth in Palestine on kibbutzim where they would learn Hebrew and agricultural techniques. Youth Aliyah was founded in 1933 by Recha Freier, a rabbi’s wife and committed Zionist, at the time of the Nazi advent to power. It would be supervised in Palestine by Henrietta Szold.

See “Recha Freier and the Beginning of Youth Aliyah” curated collection.

Academic Assistance Council (AAC)

Within months of his appointment as chancellor in 1933, Hitler’s government issued the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. Political opponents of the Nazi Party and anyone in government positions with at least one Jewish grandparent were summarily dismissed from their jobs. University professors in Germany’s best universities, judges and police officers lost their positions. The so-called “Aryan paragraph” would apply to lawyers, physicians, musicians and other civil servants. At every level of civil society and public life, Jews were persecuted through the gradual, methodical yet inexorable rollout of laws and regulations restricting their civil and political liberties. As this noose of incremental persecution tightened, academicians began to emigrate. Stepping into the breach was the Academic Assistance Council (AAC), a British initiative giving needed support and assistance to the growing number of scholars and academicians whose plight only increased with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, the 1938 Anschluss, and the devastation of the Kristallnacht pogrom shortly thereafter.

Faced with the loss of their careers and livelihoods, fearful of losing their lives, and concerned for the welfare of their families, Jewish scholars became increasingly resigned to their fate in Germany, and the exodus of Jewish scholars increased. The AAC would eventually evolve into the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL), but its mission would continue: to help refugee scholars -based on their specific curriculum vitae - find employment in the UK, the USA, and other countries. Several of the more than 1500 academic refugees from Germany and Austria would win Nobel Prizes. Several refugees had already earned them. Many of these emigrés would make important contributions to the scholarship and the culture of their adopted countries and have an enormous influence in their respective fields. For example, the current New School for Social Research in New York had been the home in the 1930s to the University in Exile, a haven for over 180 scholar-refugees and their families. Though a number of these refugees would find positions in other universities, many would remain as permanent faculty after the University in Exile had been incorporated into the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science in 1934.

The remarkable role played by the AAC academics in rescuing Jewish emigré academicians imperiled by the Nazis and helping them find new homes and institutions where they could continue their careers, would stand in stark contrast to the lack of support - and frank betrayal - on the part of their academic colleagues in the Reich who were either afraid of reprisals or given to “Gleischsaltung,” i.e., “working toward the Fuhrer” in establishing totalitarian control over Germany. A notorious example of this duplicity was that of Martin Heidegger, a world-renowned philosopher, author of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) and rector of the University of Freiberg, given to sporting a Hitler-style mustache and proudly wearing his Nazi pin. Heidegger signed every letter dismissing Jewish faculty members, including that of his own mentor Edmund Husserl - the renowned phenomenologist who had been Heidegger’s most important advocate: born a Jew but later in life baptized into the Lutheran faith. Some of Heidegger’s most eminent students were forced to leave Germany and find positions elsewhere, including Herbert Marcuse and Hannah Arendt. Heidegger would remain unrepentant for the rest of his life.

See 2022.1.12ab.

--Michael D. Bulmash, K1966

Browse the Bulmash Family Holocaust Collection.