A Plea for Heartstrings and Purse strings: The 1945 battle for combined American Jewish Fundraising

• In Event: Migration, Relief, and Aid in the Postwar World: Defining a New Transnational JDC Mission

Abstract

At the end of the war, when hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors were liberated from concentration camps and desperate for food, clothing, shelter, and the resources to find family members, the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) faced a crisis of unity that led to a break down in collective Jewish fundraising in America. The United Palestine Appeal (UPA) and the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) failed to reach an agreement about allotment percentages and called off their joint campaign in February 1945. A similar stalemate had prevented a united appeal in 1941, but the stakes of international Jewish aid were more extreme in 1945 as the doors to Europe reopened. How was it possible that at the moment when American Jews were learning the full extent of the Holocaust and Jewish organizations were first able to reach the surviving Jews of Europe, these groups were embattled in internal debates about how to raise and spend money? And, how did these internal tensions shape an initial public discourse about the Holocaust?

This paper will look closely at the 1945 break down of UJA negotiations and the ultimate reunion of JDC, UPA, and the National Refugee Service as a way to understand how the JDC raised funds in the postwar period. The public dispute played out as a battle for defining the needs of Jewish Holocaust survivors and the paper will consider the rhetoric of this battle alongside the on-the-ground efforts of committee members and volunteers across the country. As such, this paper will consider the public expressions of need that joined together Zionist and other forms of Jewish philanthropy to define initial representations of Holocaust survivors in the wake of the war. By closely reading the public expressions and organizational documents of UJA, JDC, and UPA, I will reveal that joint fundraising brought together Jewish needs and asserted American Jewish support as the primary mode of postwar survival around the world, allowing short-term immigration needs to cohere with long-term concerns over displacement and statelessness.

Author

• Rachel Deblinger, University of California, Santa Cruz