FUN HURBN TSUM OYFBOY: DER IDISHER ARBETER KOMITET FARN YOR 1943 פון חורבן צום אויפבוי
Nyu York [New York]: Aroysgegebn funm Ekzekutiv komitet fun Idishn arbeter komitet, 1944. Item #42903
1st edition. Original Orange printed paper wrappers, 8vo, 28 pages. In Yiddish. Title translates as, “From Destruction to Reconstruction: The Jewish Labor Committee for the Year 1943.”
A report on the Jewish Labor Committees Extensive Refugee Support, Anti-Nazi Boycott, and other Resistance-supporting activities for 1943, complete with budgets and details descriptions of their work.
1943 had indeed been an auspicious year to begin planning what an Allied victory might look like for the Jews. In February, the German Sixth Army had been defeated at Stalingrad, marking a turning point in the war.
Then, for a month, in April, during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising residents of the Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Warsaw, staged an armed revolt to prevent deportations to Nazi-run extermination camps. The Warsaw uprising inspired other revolts in extermination camps and ghettos throughout German-occupied Eastern Europe.
Perhaps even more significantly, 1943 was the year when the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was to be founded, and the JLC prioritized work to guarantee a prioritization of the rebuilding of Jewish life as a core support role for UNRRA.
Indeed, elsewhere in 1943, the JLC declared:
”The rehabilitation of the remnants of the Jewish people is the moral obligation of the entire civilized world. The reconstruction of Jewish life, the rehabilitation of the Jew as an individual human being, and of the Jewish community as a whole to heal the wounds of the Jewish people and to rectify the crimes committed against them by Nazi Germany- is one of the foundations upon which the future, just, postwar world will have to rise” (JLC, POST-WAR RELIEF AND REHABILITATION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY, NY, 1943).
Founded in 1934, the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) originated in an effort to link the forces of Jewish unions and other labor and Jewish fraternal organizations in the fight against the Nazis and fascism.
Efforts to aid Jews and other victims of Nazi domination, as well as to publicize their plight, were the chief activities of the JLC in its early years. To this end, the JLC joined with the American Jewish Congress to organize a boycott of Nazi goods. During the 1930s the JLC made every effort to aid victims of Nazism in Europe, through collections of money, food and clothing drives, and other forms of assistance to refugees and exiles.
Following the Allied victory, the JLC contributed to the rehabilitation of war-torn Europe by creating schools, clinics and homes for destitute children, and by providing services for Holocaust survivors in displaced persons camps.
The JLC s aim to "impress upon the Jewish masses that they must fight hand in hand with the general forces of democracy" remained the guiding principle of the JLC after the War. During the decades following the War, the JLC worked toward ensuring democratic rights for workers and minorities in the United States. (Tamiment Institute).
SUBJECT(S): Reconstruction (1939-1945) World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews. -- Peace. Guerre mondiale, 1939-1945 -- Juifs. -- Paix. OCLC: 123009458. OCLC-Worldcat lists only 2 copies worldwide (Brandeis, NYBC), both in Massachusetts. None in New York or Israel. Faint stamp on cover, Very Good Condition. Rare and important. (Holo2-162-25-’+).
Price: $275.00