American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee ( AFSC ) was formed during the First World War in 1917.
Its members are Quakers who refuse military service for reasons of faith . The AFSC organized civil peace services. In doing so, they focused on medical care and the distribution of food and clothing. Here they made no distinction between the victor and the vanquished. After the end of both world wars , they ensured the survival of many children in Germany.
Assistance
Cooperation with Herbert Hoovers relief organization
After the end of the war, the “Friends' Aid Committee” turned to Herbert Hoover with a request to be assigned a task in Europe. Hoover - himself a Quaker and later US President - was director of the American Relief Administration at the time . He entrusted the AFSC with the organization of the ARA children's aid organization for Germany. Hoover sent them experts who knew how to bring about such an action and established contact between the Quakers and the German government. The "friends" were a member of the European Assistance Council (European Relief Council, abbreviated: Eurelcon).
This aid later led to the establishment of two annual German assemblies in which people from Germany and Austria who converted to Quakerism organized . One of them still exists today. In Germany the AFSC became known as Quaker Aid or by the term Quaker feeding .
A conflict of interest with Hoover emerged in January 1921 when the AFSC was operating in Russia and the latter promised an ARA food delivery worth $ 100,000, tied to the release of American prisoners in Soviet prisons. To this end, the Quakers took the position not to see it as the task of a child welfare organization to demand or negotiate the release of political prisoners. Hoover granted the funds anyway, but he was upset and refrained from any further assistance when he became convinced that the Quakers would not take responsibility for the feeding of American prisoners.
Ultimately, Hoover got the American prisoners free when the food situation deteriorated in the summer and an agreement was reached in Riga between the ARA and the Soviet government on a far-reaching relief operation. Hoover was convinced that aid would be made possible without supporting the Bolshevik rulers. He was anxious to commit all Eurelcon members to his line, and on August 24, 1921, at a meeting at the US Department of Commerce, asked them to submit to the ARA director. The "friends" did this reluctantly, especially since Hoover asked them to break their connection with the British Quakers in order to ensure a uniform appearance on the ground. He wanted to finance the operation with US government funds and Russian gold alone, but the Quakers insisted that a public call for aid to Russia must be made. Hoover countered that they had been subjected to the propaganda of mill operators and accused them of associating with radical groups. The aid organizations in turn responded with personal attacks on Hoover, which made him complain in a letter to AFSC boss Rufus Jones that he had ever taken part in the action, which was accompanied by so many defamations against him.
The “friends” in Russia were not under the orders of the Moscow ARA headquarters and were housed in Sorochinsk in one of the areas most severely affected by the famine. In contrast to what is usual at the ARA, the almost dozen people also included experienced emergency helpers. They differed from the sometimes impersonal, business-like appearance of ARA by a more sociable form of emergency aid. The persistent differences of opinion between New York and Philadelphia finally led in February 1922 to the break with Hoover's ARA and to the merger with the aid operation of the British Quakers - much to the annoyance of the "friends" in the Volga valley, who described the methods of the British department as "ineffective" and criticized the "difference in temperament".
Post-war aid in 1945
With the end of the Second World War , the representatives of the AFSC came to Europe for the second time after a war, but to a continent that was much more destroyed by the new war. The aim of the committee is to save thousands of children from starving and freezing to death. This aid remained in the collective memory of the Germans for decades and became the standing term Quaker feeding .
In addition, Quaker and Mennonite organizations and other religious communities as well as cooperative and trade union associations (22 organizations in total) founded in 1945 - the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe , (now CARE International ), which at the end of the 1940s provided CARE package aid - mainly for the West - and southern Europe and a little later also for alleviating the war damage in East Asia .
Work after 1955
In 1996, the AFSC and Quäker-Hilfe eV (Aid Organization for German Quakers) founded the Quaker Help Foundation , which financially supports Quaker aid projects in many countries around the world.
The AFSC is still active today. The AFSC supports the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) in New York City as the representation of Quakerism at the UN headquarters .
Awards
On behalf of the efforts of organized and unorganized Quakers, the AFSC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 together with the British Quaker organization Quaker Peace and Social Witness .
See also
literature
- Hall, Willis: Quaker International Work in Europe since 1914, Geneva 1938.
- Stöhr, Hermann: This is how America helped. The United States' Foreign Aid 1812–1930, Stettin 1936.
Web links
- Official website
- Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 1947 award ceremony to the American Friends Service Committee
Individual evidence
- ^ Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 1). Years of Adventure 1874–1920 , Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1951, p. 289
- ^ Benjamin Murry Weissman: Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia. 1921-1923 , Hoover Institution Press, Stanford 1974, ISBN 0-8179-1341-6 , pp. 41 f.
- ^ BM Weissman: Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia. Stanford 1974, p. 71
- ↑ a b Bertrand M. Patenaude : The Big Show in Bololand. The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 , Stanford University Press, Stanford 2002, pp. 139-142
- ^ BM Weissman: Herbert Hoover and Famine Relief to Soviet Russia. Stanford 1974, p. 107 f.
- ↑ Quaker Help Foundation ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
