International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War

Abstract

In 1914, seven million Jews across Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean were caught in the crossfire of warring empires in a disaster of stupendous, unprecedented proportions. In response, American Jews developed a new model of humanitarian relief for their suffering brethren abroad, wandering into American foreign policy as they navigated a wartime political landscape. The effort continued into peacetime, touching every interwar Jewish community in these troubled regions through long-term refugee, child welfare, public health, and poverty alleviation projects. Against the backdrop of war, revolution, and reconstruction, this is the story of American Jews who went abroad in solidarity to rescue and rebuild Jewish lives in Jewish homelands. As they constructed a new form of humanitarianism and re-drew the map of modern philanthropy, they rebuilt the Jewish Diaspora itself in the image of the modern social welfare state.

Healthcare and Recreation: The Infrastructure of Summer Colonies for Children in Lithuania in 1918–194

“…The spacious building was well lit by the sun. The impressions of the children who came to the colony Source Zdroj: Sveikata ir darbas, 1936, 39 (7) were described in the press in an illustrative way: "The children of the poor workers who came to the colony, who lived in poor flats, found themselves at once in a huge summer house with windows as big as doors (such buildings are rare in provincial towns), and they felt like they were in church. Clean and spacious, and it just sounds resonant."…”

“…In Central Europe, after the First World War, a Polish paediatrician, Dr Anna Braude Heller, was the first to establish a Jewish children's summer colony near Warsaw, and this model of children's recreation was later adopted throughout Central Eastern Europe. 7 Children's summer colonies were used in various countries to combat tuberculosis through the therapeutic effects of climate, health education, nutrition and recreation. In 1924, The Marine Colony was founded in Rijeka, Croatia, specialising in the treatment of children with clinical tuberculosis or who were at higher risk of developing it.…”

Solidarity as an Emotion: American Jews and Israel in 1948

“…As Jaclyn Granick has noted, "Forms of humanitarianism in history were a primary political tool of diaspora and non-state transnational politics." 120 In the immediate postwar era, the activity of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Europe and the United Jewish Appeal on behalf of the creation of a Jewish state as a refuge for European Jewry in some ways paralleled that of American organizations like Lutheran World Relief (most of whose funds targeted Germany) and Catholic Relief Services. CARE, founded in 1945, allowed donors to designate the beneficiaries of food packages, thereby bonding ethno-religious communities in America with kinsfolk abroad.…”