Germany Emergency Committee

The Germany Emergency Committee (GEC) was an aid organization founded by British Quakers to support German and Austrian people who were persecuted or had to flee from the German Reich during the National Socialist era . The committee was later renamed the Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (FCRA) .

The creation of the GEC

In response to the National Socialist takeover in Germany and the persecution of political opponents, Jews and other groups, the English Quakers founded the GEC on April 7, 1933. The seat of the committee was initially the Friends House , the Quaker headquarters in London. The first chairwoman of the committee was Bertha Bracey , who remained so until 1948. She started her work together with a part-time employee and initially only had 59 help cases to deal with.

The committee soon provided extensive refugee aid. It helped, for example, to track down victims of persecution in Germany and Austria, and did not shy away from contact with the National Socialist rulers. In England, on the other hand, it was necessary to counteract the restrictive conditions for refugees . The GEC needed to find British supporters willing to provide guarantees for refugees arriving in England and it also helped those hoping to find work in the UK. In the mid-1930s, however, jobs were mostly only available to those who were willing to work as domestic servants, because the domestic service sector was one of the few areas of work open to refugees.

The Quakers provided moral and financial support for the refugees who had arrived in Britain. For children of the refugees they made available reduced or free places in Quaker boarding schools, for example in the Ayton School .

The work of the committee initially focused on aid for political refugees from the German Reich. Later, and especially from 1938, the work for Jewish refugees became more important. Refugees who were not looked after by the Jewish aid organizations remained a special concern of the Quakers.

The intensification of work from 1938

Until the spring of 1938, the staff of the GEC London office remained rather small. The annexation of Austria , the events that followed it on the continent and the resulting stream of refugees required an increase in the staff of all refugee committees, which also affected the GEC. By the end of 1938 there were already 59 employees working for the GEC and it became necessary to set up a smaller executive committee to better structure the work. In February 1939, 80 GEC employees, who meanwhile looked after around 14,000 emergencies, moved into rooms in Bloomsbury House (actually the Palace Hotel on London's Bloomsbury Street), where other refugee aid organizations such as the Jewish Refugee Committee , the Church of England Committee for Non-Aryan Christians (founded by George Kennedy Allen Bell ), the Catholic Committee for Refugees from Germany and the Refugee Children's Movement had their seat. For internal coordination of work in the Bloomsbury House was Inter-Church Council for German Refugees founded, which was led by Bertha Bracey.

Most of the organizations based at Bloomsbury House were part of the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees , which worked with the UK government to coordinate support for the refugees. At that time (lower house debate on December 1, 1938) there were a total of 11 organizations:

Catholic Committee for Refugees from Germany
Church of England Committee for Non-Aryan Christians
German Jewish Aid Committee
Inter-Aid Committee for Children coming from Germany (organizer of Kindertransporte )
International Student Service
Society of Friends (Germany Emergency and Austria Committees)
Society for the Protection of Science and Learning
Trades Union Congress and Labor Party
International Hebrew Christian Alliance
Christian Council for Refugees from Germany
British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia

The tremendous increase in the work of the GEC, the visible evidence of which was the move to Bloomsbury House , was made possible by grants. For example, they came from the Christian Council for Refugees from Germany and came from the Lord Baldwin Fund for Refugees . But there have also been many direct donations to the GEC from the UK public.

With the outbreak of the Second World War and above all through the internment of many enemy aliens from the middle of 1940, the GEC's relief efforts were further expanded. As early as 1939 the Quakers had founded a section for foreigners through which they expanded their work to include people who had not come to Great Britain as refugees. Likewise, the work was later extended to help prisoners of war. This resulted in the decision in December 1942 to rename the German Emergency Committee to Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens (FCRA) .

With the release of the Enemy Aliens , the FCRA faced new tasks. Accommodation had to be found, scholarships were made available and medical care had to be organized for the sick. The attempt to help refugees become more self-employed by providing them with training and jobs has been boosted by the increasing number of working-age refugees being able to join the British war industry. The FCRA also looked after those whose plans to emigrate had been thwarted by the outbreak of war, for example members of the so-called "Kagran Group". They were a group of young people from Vienna who could be brought to Great Britain shortly before the outbreak of war to be trained for agricultural work in South America. The FCRA helped some of them achieve their goals after all.

After the end of the Second World War, the work of the FCRA gradually ebbed. Many of the refugees hitherto looked after emigrated, were repatriated or naturalized, so that in March 1950 only five employees were still working for the FCRA.

The fact that the British and American Quakers were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 is probably due not least to the work of the GEC / FCRA.

literature

Charmian Brinson , William Kaczynski: Fleeing from the Führer. A postal History of Refugees from the Nazis , The History Press, Stroud, 2011, ISBN 0-7524-6195-8 .
Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust. Ordinary Britons Who Risked Their Lives to Make a Difference , Ebury Press, London, 2012, ISBN 978-0-09-194067-6 .

Web links

JENNIFER TAYLOR: THE MISSING CHAPTER: HOW THE BRITISH QUAKERS HELPED TO SAVE THE JEWS OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA FROM NAZI PERSECUTION. , 2009.

Individual evidence

↑ In the literature there is often talk of the "German Emergency Committee" - in analogy to the German Educational Reconstruction Committee (GER) or the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain (FGLC). The omission of the "y" is more than a semantic negligence, because it blurs a fundamental difference between the three organizations mentioned. GER and FGLC were founded by German emigrants in Great Britain; Both organizations wanted to show by giving their names that they are “German” but speak for “good Germany”. Their aim has always been to counter-enlightenment in a country that, for understandable reasons, was not very friendly to Germany. The GEC was not a German organization, it was the founding of English Quakers who wanted to provide help in and for Germany.

↑ Unless otherwise stated, the following presentation largely follows the section The Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens in: Charmian Brinson, William Kaczynski: Fleeing from the Führer , pp. 98-100. The presentation in Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , pp. 31–50 , is somewhat more detailed and focused more on Bertha Bracey .

^ Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , p. 35.

^ Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , pp. 36-37.

↑ JENNIFER TAYLOR: THE MISSING CHAPTER: HOW THE BRITISH QUAKERS HELPED TO SAVE THE JEWS OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA FROM NAZI PERSECUTION. , 2009.

^ Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , p. 45

^ Members of the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees . The debate associated with naming this list, which was anything but free from xenophobic resentment, can be read under: Refugees .

↑ On December 8, 1938, former Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin launched an appeal on the BBC raising funds for the very sizeable £ 500,000 of the Lord Baldwin Fund for Refugees . Most of the money was used to finance the Kindertransport , but other refugee organizations also benefited. See also: Kindertransport

↑ See: History of the Kagran Group in the section on Hubert Butler ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 12ff. @1@ 2

^ Friends Service Council - History Organization . The work of the GEC is explicitly mentioned here.

[1] In the literature there is often talk of the "German Emergency Committee" - in analogy to the German Educational Reconstruction Committee (GER) or the Free German League of Culture in Great Britain (FGLC). The omission of the "y" is more than a semantic negligence, because it blurs a fundamental difference between the three organizations mentioned. GER and FGLC were founded by German emigrants in Great Britain; Both organizations wanted to show by giving their names that they are “German” but speak for “good Germany”. Their aim has always been to counter-enlightenment in a country that, for understandable reasons, was not very friendly to Germany. The GEC was not a German organization, it was the founding of English Quakers who wanted to provide help in and for Germany.

[2] Unless otherwise stated, the following presentation largely follows the section The Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens in: Charmian Brinson, William Kaczynski: Fleeing from the Führer , pp. 98-100. The presentation in Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , pp. 31–50 , is somewhat more detailed and focused more on Bertha Bracey .

[3] Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , p. 35.

[4] Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , pp. 36-37.

[5] JENNIFER TAYLOR: THE MISSING CHAPTER: HOW THE BRITISH QUAKERS HELPED TO SAVE THE JEWS OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA FROM NAZI PERSECUTION. , 2009.

[6] Lyn Smith: Heroes of the Holocaust , p. 45

[7] Members of the Co-ordinating Committee for Refugees . The debate associated with naming this list, which was anything but free from xenophobic resentment, can be read under: Refugees .