From Philanthropy to Politics: The World Jewish Congress & the Refugee Crisis of the 1930s

• In Event: Critical Crossroads: Jewish Responses and Experiences during the Refugee Crises of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

World Jewish Congress leaders began a political campaign on behalf of Europe’s Jews and Jewish refuge in Europe immediately after convening its inaugural conference in August 1936. WJC leadership was active in the institutions of the League of Nations, where the organization’s functionaries emphasized the League’s obligation to protect the rights of minorities in general and those of European Jews in particular. They maintained that since the issue of minority rights was high on the League’s agenda, it was obligated to promote the rights of Jews not only among its members, but also in non-member countries. Despite the League of Nation’s significant inherent structural problems, which came to the fore in the latter half of the 1930s, the WJC’s leaders went out of their way to operate in this arena. The grave state of Europe’s Jews left them no choice in the matter; they sought every available channel through which to ameliorate their situation. WJC leadership tried to turn the question of European Jews into an international political issue that transcended traditional philanthropic assistance to Jews in need.
In my paper I would present examples of a broad political activities that demonstrates the desire of the WJC’s founders to deviate from the patterns of conventional philanthropic activity traditionally adopted by American Jewish organizations in the latter half of the 1930s, and to work on behalf of Europe’s Jews and Jewish refuge in Europe by political means that involved blending the Jewish issue into Europe’s international political and economic texture and promoting the Jewish cause in ways that transcended mere provision of economic assistance. Congress emissaries in Europe conducted a wide range of activities along these lines during the second half of the 1930s, especially in 1938 and 1939 in the wake of the considerable deterioration in the condition of Europe’s Jews. In accordance with one of the lessons learned from the Evian Conference, they sought to set up a united front of Jewish organizations engaged in assisting European Jews with a view to exerting more effective pressure on international bodies that addressed the refugee issue.

author

• Zohar Segev, University of Haifa