Unitarian Service Committee
The Unitarian Service Committee (USC) was an American aid organization that helped European refugees to escape persecution by the Nazis from 1940.
History of the USC
The USC was founded by Unitarians in Boston in May 1940 . The first director and managing director was Charles Rhind Joy (1895-1978). “The Unitanan Service Committee (USC) was one of several American Christian organizations that helped refugees, mostly Christians, during the Nazi era. Although similar to the American Friends Service Committee of the Quakers, the USC differed in its rejection of neutrality and openly expressed its support for the Allied cause. Despite its late start (1940) in overseas work, USC has been very energetic and creative in helping refugees. "
In Europe, the USC was led from 1941 to 1944 from its Lisbon location under the direction of Robert Cloutman Dexter (1887–1955). After Haim Genizi, the USC was the only relief organization there that had specialized in the care of illegal refugees.
From 1942, Dexter also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS).
In 1942 the headquarters of the executive office was moved to Geneva , where the USC was headed by Noel Haviland Field . The symbol of the USC, a chalice with a burning flame, was created in 1941 by the Austrian artist Hans Deutsch .
After the end of the Second World War, the USC participated in the aid deliveries for occupied Germany as part of the work of the Council of Relief Agencies Licensed to Operate in Germany (CRALOG). The USC's liaison to the CRALOG was Hermann Ebeling , who emigrated to the United States and who, after serving in the US Army, was Assistant Director of the USC from 1946 to 1949 , and worked in Mainz as CRALOG representative for the French zone of occupation in 1946/1947.
In 1949 the USC founded a Germany committee which, along with many other people, included William Dieterle , Lion Feuchtwanger , Leonhard Frank and Fritz von Unruh . A first appeal from May 1949 is based on a relentless analysis of the social situation in Germany after the currency reform .
“There are hundreds of thousands of war disabled and physically damaged victims of the bombing, mutilated, crippled and blind, who are an oppressive burden for themselves and the heavily planned community of their people. There are countless orphans among the 12/13 million displaced persons. Parentless youths pour daily from the east over the zone border into the overpopulated west. Without a home, without care, without love, they are in danger of being completely neglected; now they populate the black market, tomorrow they will form an army of criminals. It is not your fault. They are the innocent victims of a world that has gone off the rails without any help on their part. These groups of the socially, emotionally and materially uprooted are not helped with a slice of bread, a suit, not even a good word. "
The appeal justified a partial departure from the previously practiced aid deliveries and relied on a concept that should offer those in need a perspective for the future.
“Help must be rescue and rehabilitation. The task we face can be summed up in a few words as follows: We have to make the helpless cripples and the refugees back home and down to earth, we have to integrate them into the community as full members through work and work. Because only the professional, the working person can stand on his own two feet, only he is free from fear, only he is FREE. "
The committee refers to the plans of the USC for a vocational education center near Braunschweig , to vocational retraining centers in East Friesland , which are to be expanded into production communities, and to a training farm in Schleswig-Holstein, where young displaced persons are to be trained in agriculture or handicrafts. Trained staff are available to implement these plans, but what is lacking is the financial resources. Therefore, in its appeal explicitly addressed to the German-speaking Unitarians, the committee asks for material support and participation “in this important and beautiful task of humanity”, which should benefit young people in particular. Because: “While we help them, we also help the economic body as a whole; we ease the burden of charities who, due to a lack of resources, are unable to cope with the problem; and we provide the labor market with trained workers. Both are urgently needed. "
It is not known what has become reality of these plans.
Further priorities of the USC work
The USC was by no means limited to Europe or Germany. In 1947, the Texas Migrant Workers Project was founded to provide childcare, education, and nutrition to exploited communities. This was followed by an educational program for social workers in Korea in 1954 and in the same year the establishment of the Navajo Community Center in Gallup to support the threatened Navajo people with social services and educational opportunities.
In 1955 an aid project was started in Vienna to help Hungarian refugees after the Hungarian uprising . This work was continued by the USC into the 1960s. 1958 in Nigeria , a health and community development project set up, and in Georgia and Florida , the USC started in 1960 Desegregationsprojekte repealing segregation . The USC claims to have played "a prominent role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s".
In 1963 the USC merged with the Universalist Service Committee to form the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC). The wider range of tasks of the new organization subsequently extended to international crisis interventions and development aid measures as well as to support in civil society disputes in the USA.
literature
- Charles R. Joy : Lives were saved: The Unitarian Service Committee in World War II. In: Stephen H. Fritchman (Ed.): Together we advance. Beacon Press, Boston 1946 (English).
- Susan Elisabeth Subak: Rescue and Flight: American Relief Workers Who Defied the Nazis . University of Nebraska Press, 2010, (English).
Web links
proof
- ↑ a b HAIM GENIZI: CHRISTIAN CHARITY: THE UNITARIAN SERVICE COMMITTEE'S RELIEF ACTIVITIES ON BEHALF OF REFUGEES FROM NAZISM, 1940–5 , in: Holocaust and genocide studies , Oxford University Press, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1987, Pages 261–276. "The Unitanan Service Committee (USC) was one of a number of American Christian organizations which aided refugees, mostly Christians, during the Nazi period. Although modeled somewhat after the Quakers' American Friends Service Committee, the USC differed from this group in its opposition to neutrality and openly expressed support for the Allied cause despite its late start (1940) in overseas work, the USC was very energetic and creative in aiding refugees. "
- ↑ Bernd-Rainer Barth , Werner Schweizer (ed.): The case of Noel Field. Berlin 2005, p. 173.
- ↑ Christian Charity: The Unitarian Service Committee's Relief ... (PDF)
- ↑ Symbol of the USC ( Memento of the original from December 20, 2006 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.
- ^ Federal Archives Koblenz - N 1374: Hermann Ebeling estate
- ↑ a b c Germany Committee of the USC, Chicago 1949, in: Bundesarchiv, N 1374 - Hermann Ebeling estate
- ↑ a b c Timeline for the history of the USC (in English)
