My Brother's Keeper; A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1929-1939
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1974. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. xi, [1], 350, [4] pages. DJ has several small tears and chips. Includes Preface, Introduction: The First Fifteen Years, six chapters. Conclusion, Notes, Bibliography, and Index. Also includes an Appendix on the Income and Expenditure of JDC: 1914-1939, as well as 20 black and white tables in the text. A card from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, with the compliments of Chairman Edward Ginsburg of the Committee, is laid in at the front of the book. This book deals with the efforts of American Jews--through their overseas aid organization, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee--to come to the aid of European Jewry in the crucial prewar decade, 1929-1939. Yehuda Bauer (born April 6, 1926) is an Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His family migrated to Palestine by managing to get past Nazi officials on a train which slipped them over the border into Poland, from which they moved, via Romania, to Palestine. He joined the Palmach and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was the founding editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and served on the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust, published by Yad Vashem in 1990. During the years, 1933–1939, in which America was in the Great Depression, the Jewish Distribution Committee was able to aid over 190,000 Jews in their escape from a Nazi-occupied Germany. Of the 190,000 Jews, 80,000 were able to escape Europe completely. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as the Joint or the JDC, is a Jewish relief organization based in New York City. The JDC was founded in 1914, initially to provide assistance to Jews living in Palestine under Turkish rule. Hitler's rise to power in 1933 was followed closely by passage of Germany's Nuremberg Laws, a set of onerous restrictions that stripped Jews of their basic human rights and livelihoods. JDC's support became critical to the survival of the Jews. Channeling funds through local Jewish relief organizations, JDC subsidized medical care, schools, vocational training, welfare programs, and early emigration efforts. JDC support would eventually be extended to Jewish communities in Nazi-annexed Austria and occupied Czechoslovakia. It was not long before the escalation of Hitler's persecution of the Jews made emigration aid from the JDC a priority. JDC provided emergency aid for stranded refugees; covered travel expenses and landing fees; and secured travel accommodations and all-important visas for countries of refuge.
Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and World War II was declared by England and France on Sept 3, 1939. This immediately increased the need for help for Jewish emigration. During the period 1933 to the end of 1939, JDC-supported organizations had helped some 110,000 Jews emigrate from Germany; in 1939 alone it helped some 30,000. Condition: Very good / Good.
Keywords: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Jews, Holocaust, Genocide, Refugees, Anti-Semitism, Bernhard Kahn, Immigration, Joseph Rosen, Felix Warburg, Zionism
ISBN: 0827600488
[Book #80286]
Price: $125.00