Figure 1.-- .

Several agencies were created to save the Jew targeted by the NAZIs. There were agencies created by the NAZIs are which the NAZIs allowed to operate. The agencies created by the NAZIs were agencies created to control Jews and in which the Jews had no real alternative but to particiopate. Other agencies were organozed by the Jews and the NAZIs allowed to operate. This reflected the initial NAZI policy of trying to force Jews to emigrate from Germany. Other agencies were created to assist Jews to survive, primarily by emigrating from Germany or other European countries. For the most part these were organizations in America, one of the countries with the largest Jewish populations. (The other two important countrues were Poland and the Soviet Union). There were also agencies created to assist refugees in general, but Jews were an important group benefitting from aid to refugees.

American-Jewish Joint Distribution Comittee (JDC)

The American Jewish Joint Destrubution Committee (JDC) was estanlihed after the Ottoman Empire entered World War by joining the Central Powers. This isolated Jewish communities in Palistine and the wider Middle East cintrolled by the Ottomans (1914). The JDC was formed by a temporary collective of three existing religious and secular Jewish organizations (the American Jewish Relief Committee, the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews Suffering Through the War, and People’s Relief Committee). (1914). Jewish communities in the Pale also suffered as the Germans n the Eastern Front pushed into Poland (1915). This temporary effort turned into a permnent effort. And with the rise of the NAZIs in Germany (1933), once of the greatest humanitarin crises in history developed. At first it was primrily German Jews that were targeted. With the outbreak of the War and the the NAZI Holocaust (1939), all of European Jewery faced the threat of annihilation. The severity of the crisis was beyond the capability of any privte organization to address. put new, unprecedented demands on the American Jewish community and JDC to respond. And the bility of the JDC to help was severly restricted as NAZI conquests expanded making it imposible for the JDC to operate in the contries where Jews were most threatened. As the NAZIs reverted to mass miurder, relief efforts could do little. ThevJDC did what it could. The managed to get 81,000 out of NAZI-occupied Europe to safety. The JDC managed to smuggled aid to some Jewish prisoners in labor camps and helped finance the Polish Jewish underground in preparations for the Warsaw Ghetto revolt (1943). The JDC proved to be a major channel to get reports on the Holocaust to American Jewish leaders and the internationl media. After the liberation of Europe progresse and especially with the NAZI surrender (May 1945), the JDC was finally able to get relief supplies to the Holocaust victims. The JDC played a major role in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps

Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds

Kindertransport Groups

The Inter-Aid Committee for Children from Germany was the primary groups created to oversee the Kindertransport Children. Many ad hoc griouops were setb up in Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Gernmany to make the need arangements. There were organizers both in Germany and in Britain. We know more about the British groups. A reader with whom we have been discusing the Holocaust points out, "I must tell you that these were not organized by the British Government. They were organized and paid for by Jewish committees. I have to tell you this because I do refute your statements about Britain helping Jews. By 1938, the only country in the world to accept Jewish refugees was South Africa. Britain had no option but to accept the Kinder Transports - how could the public know that their government was allowing children to die? - and, as I mentioned on Quora, they accepted those Jews whom they considered the 'elite' - academics - but they too were sponsored by families (such as the Attenborough family), and not supported in any way by the government. Whether academics are necessarily the 'elite' of any society is a moot point.

United Jewish Appeal

American Jewish grouops formed the United Jewish Appeal (January 1939). This unified Jewish chairatable fundraising for the first time ever. This was imprtant because the Unitded States was the only country with a sizeable Jewish population that could raise substantial funds to aid European Jews. Of course the funds raised were for charitavke effortys in America and not just to aid European Jews,

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)

Jewish refugees presented an especially difficult problem. [Greenfeld] UNRAA attempted to provide emergency relief as needed and to ger refugees back to their countries of origin. This was not easy in the case of thge Jewish refugees. In most cases they were unwilling or unable to go home. The NAZI killing process was so sucessful, that the communities that they had come from no longer existed. Some Jews trying to return home were attacked, especially in Eastern Europoe. An especially egrigious pogrom occurred in Poland. And many Jews were afraid to return home because of the way many of their countrymen had cooperated with the NAZIs. So the primary UNRAA policy of getting the refugees home could not be pursued in the case of most Jewish refugees. And the children were a special mproblem because in most cases their parents and even extended famikly were all dead. UNRRA provided support for displaced persons camps, but Jewish oirganization from an early point organized the Jews in these camps. Special provision had to be made for Jedwish refugees because unlike mnost other refugees, they did not have homes to return to. Quite a numner of DP camps were established, most in the American occupation zone of defeated Germany. At the time Israel did not yet exist. And the British to placate the Arabs were not allowing Jewish migration into Palestine. Jewish organizations attempted to get somec refugees ito Palestine surepticously.

Vaad Hatzalah

The Vaad Hatzalah (Rescue Ccommittee) was formed by Orthodox American Jews to asssist Polish Jews targetted by the NAZIs and Soviets at the onset of World War II (September 1939). It was founded by Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada -- the most important association of Orthodox rabbis in North America. Rabbi Aharon Kotler and Irving Bunim played important roles in organizing the group. The NAZIs targeted all Jews. The Soviets targeted relgious Jews and Jewish religious intitutions. The organization was founded to help rabbis and yeshivah students in Europe who were fleeing the German and Soviet invasions of Poland. The Vaad initially caslled the "Emergency Committee for War-Torn Yeshivot". It was difficuklt to help Jews trapped in Poland by the NAZI and Soviet armies, but the Vaad did attemot to negotiate with the NAZIs and were able to provide some assistnce to the small number of Jews who managed to flee to Japan and Shanghai. The Vaad was initially designed to resue rabbis an yeshiva students, but after the ar took on a more genral effort to id Jewish refugees. The Vaad provided spiritual and physical rehabilitation for the survivors of the Holocause in Displaced Prsions camps. They provided religious articles, kosher food, and funded Jewish educational facilities. The Vaad also assisted in arranging visas for refugee rabbis and religious students to the United States.

Youth Aliyah (YA)

Youth Aliyah (YA - עלית הנוער ) was a Jewish organization founded in Germany by Recha Freier, a rabbi's wife (1933). The idea was to establish pioneer training programs for young Jews who had finished primary school (youths 13-years of age and older) in Palestine and settle them there. She received support from the World Zionist Organization. Freier supervised the organization's activities, recruiting young peoplr in Germany. Henrietta Szold oversaw the program and the other end in Jerusalem which prepared for the arivals. Szold was at first skeptcal of Freier's proposal that German youngsters be sent to in Palestine. She believed that Germany offered better educational and employment opportunities for Jewish children than were available in Palestine, but Hitler's rise to power and promotion of anti-Semitism soon changed her mind (1933). Hitler issued the Nurenberg Race Laws (1935) stripping Jews of their citizenship and expelling them from state schools. The children joining YA were given preliminary training in Germany before traveling to Palestine. There they were assigned to kibbutzim for 2 years to learn farming skills and Hebrew. Kibbutz Ein Harod in the Jezreel Valley was one of the first kibbutzim to host the youth. The NAZIs did not interfere with this effort, although as pressure on Jews increased, funding became increasingly difficult. The major problem at first was getting the youth into Palestine. The British restricted emigration because of Arab opposition. After Kristalnacht and the approach of World War II, the NAZIs began making exit visas ifficult to obtain. Youth Aliyah activists in London as a result of the deteriorating situation in the Reich organized training for the young people outside the Reich in preparatuion for immigration to Palestine. Some of the Kindertranport children were from YA groups. YA saved an estimated 22,000 Jewish youths from the NAZIs. After the defeat of the NAZIs in World War II (May 1945), YA sent representatives to Europe to locate surviving Jewish children in Displaced Persons camps. YA also organized the move of Jewish children's homes in eastern Europe to the Western Europe, anticipating that evacuation from Communist countries might eventually become difficult. Y

Created: 9:15 PM 10/23/2024
Last updated: 9:15 PM 10/23/2024