IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY! TSU DER YIDISHER EFNTLECHKAYT! !צו דער יידישער עפנטלעכקייט
New York, The Organization, No Date, 1946-1947? Item #43409
1st edition. Double-sided English-Yiddish leaflet, [2] pages. The Yiddish header translates roughly as, “[An Announcement] To the Jewish Public”
Bilingual American Flyer condemning the Joint (the American Joint Distribution Committee, AJDC) for not doing more to help the Jewish DPs and its “hiding” behind the German police when DP’s demonstrated for more action on DP resettlement.
The issuing organization, the United Jewish Survivors of Nazi Persecution/Farband fun Geveyzene Yidishe Katsetler un Partizaner, was the first survivor network founded in the US. Their Yiddish name translates as, "The Association of Former Jewish Concentration Camp Inmates and Partisans." The word “Katsetler” in their name is a contraction of "kontsentratsyonslager-er" using the letters K and Z (“ka” and “tset”) and thus short for “kontsetratsyonslager,” a concentration camp inmate or survivor, sometimes also noted as a "katsetnik."
The flyer announces:
“Jewish blood was again shed on German soil! German police fought with remaining victims of Nazism. But this time the sad event was instigated by the prominent Jewish organization-The Joint Distribution Committee.
What happened?
There remains today in Camp Foehrenwald, near Munich, about two thousand helpless, forlorn and ill D.P's who miraculously escaped the extermination furnaces in nazi-occupied Poland and Hitler-Germany. Hungry, desperate, destitute men, women and children, the ‘forgotten’ Jews, have been knocking at the doors of the democratic countries for a haven and refuge and a home they can call their own.
With this goal in mind they demand immediate help from the Joint while in camp and help to establish themselves in their eventual homes in the countries that have offered refuge. But the Joint turned a ‘deaf ear’ toward their pleas.
And when these disillusioned D.P.'s demonstrated before the offices of the Joint in Munich, the German police, in a previously planned attack, critically wounded, whipped and battered off the demonstrators.
The Joint in Munich with the approval of the Joint in Paris asked the police to protect them against the Jewish D.P. demonstrators.
We, the survivors of Nazi-Germany now living in the United States, cannot forget the extreme torments and the inferno of the nazi-torture; we who suffered with many victims now in Foch- renwald, are horror-stricken and dismayed, and our hearts cry out against the Joint for the brutality toward our helpless brethern in misfortune.
We express our deep-felt sympathy toward our brothers in Foehrenwald.
demand that the Joint representatives responsible for these brutal attacks on the D.P.'s by the German police, be punished.
In the name of humanity, we beseech the Jews in the United States to let their voices be heard, help these sick, tragic and frustrated victims to find homes and a life of human dignity again” (From the English side of the flyer).
After World War II, Munich served as a major center for Jewish Holocaust survivors, the “Sh'erit ha-Pletah” who were living in DP camps. The "Joint" was the primary welfare organization providing aid, clothing, and food to these camps. While the Joint was a vital lifeline, its Munich headquarters at Siebertstrasse 3 sometimes became the focal point for frustration regarding the pace of aid distribution or, more frequently, the slow pace of emigration to Palestine (Aliyah) and broader, often frustrating, postwar conditions.
Following the 1947 Exodus ship incident, where Jewish refugees were returned to Germany by the British, Jewish DPs felt trapped and staged intense demonstrations, including protests at the offices of international organizations like the Joint to highlight their despair.
These demonstrations were part of a broader effort by survivors to assert their agency and demand rights during their time in Munich (1945–1951). For more on tensions between Munich’s Jewish DPs and the Joint, see www.juedisches-museum-muenchen.de/en/exhibitions/munich-displaced-online/moehlstrasse.
Scholar David Slucki notes about the publishers of this leaflet that, “Within months of arriving in the United States in 1946, Jewish Holocaust survivors began to organize themselves to help with the process of resettlement. The small band of socialists who established the Farband fun Geveyzene Yidishe Katsetler un Partizaner (United Jewish Survivors of Nazi Persecution) [this group] initiated a dual process of identity formation and memorialization of the Holocaust.
The first survivor network founded in the United States, the Katsetler Farband [this group] developed a memorial culture that included commemorations and publications, replete with its own rituals and calendar. Moreover, the organization was part of a broader process of defining what experiences constituted the Holocaust and who was to be considered a survivor. Ultimately, they were among a host of survivor networks in the United States to lay the foundation for Holocaust memorialization” [Slucki, D. (2017). A Community of Suffering: Jewish Holocaust Survivor Networks in Postwar America. Jewish Social Studies, 22(2), 116-145. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/649094]
We could locate no copies in OCLC-Worldcat, Archive Grid, nor using a google search.
Touch of edgewear, one diagonal fold, paper generally bright and strong, about Very Good- Condition. (Holo2-163-28A).
Price: $500.00