Jewish Labor Committee Records, Part I

The Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) was founded to provide a presence for Jewish labor in the councils of the American trade-union movement and in the Jewish "establishment," and to mobilize labor in the struggle against fascism. Its founding meeting, at Central Plaza on New York's Lower East Side, on February 25th 1934, brought together more than a thousand delegates representing the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), Amalgamated Clothing Workers, United Hebrew Trades, Workmen's Circle, Jewish Daily Forward Association, and a number of smaller groups. Baruch Charney Vladeck, general manager of the Forward, was chosen president, David Dubinsky of the ILGWU, treasurer; Joseph Baskin of the Workmen's Circle, secretary; and Benjamin Gebiner, also of the Workmen's Circle, executive secretary. Holding that only a broad-based workers' movement could overthrow Hitlerism, the JLC emphasized its labor orientation and nonsectarian philosophy. Its immediate aims were to support Jewish civil and human rights everywhere, to support progressive and democratic anti-fascist groups, to aid refugees, and to educate the American labor movement (and the general public) about the Nazi threat.

The JLC was the brainchild of B. C. Vladeck, a writer and organizer known for the elegance of his Yiddish oratory and adept at navigating the perilous waters of New York immigrant politics. Vladeck, like many of the early generation of Jewish-American labor and socialist leaders, had served his political apprenticeship in the famous "Bund" or General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. In many respects, the founders of the JLC were translating and adapting lessons learned in the ranks of the Bund for use in the very different social milieu of America.

As JLC president, Vladeck gave a stirring anti-Nazi speech at the 1934 convention of the American Federation of Labor. In response the AFL created a Labor Chest to aid the victims of fascism; in coming years, the Chest funded a number of JLC-inspired educational and aid projects. The JLC handled much of the editorial work for the Labor Chest News Service and produced many Labor Chest pamphlets. The Committee also organized a mass meetings in New York City under Labor Chest auspices.

The JLC worked with other national and local Jewish organizations engaged in anti-Nazi work. One of the its early concerns was to build support for a boycott of Nazi goods, both in the labor movement and among the general public; with the American Jewish Congress it participated in the Joint Boycott Council from 1938 to 1941. When the American Olympics Committee declined to heed widespread protests against United States participation in the Berlin Olympics of 1936, the JLC, with the Workmen's Circle and the ILGWU, staged a World Labor Athletic Carnival, also known as the Counter-Olympics, in New York City in August 1936.

Another urgent concern was the fate of refugees. Neither the U.S. government nor the AFL was open to proposals for relaxing immigration controls, so the JLC had to press for special ad hoc measures. In 1939-1940, after the Nazi invasion of Poland and the fall of France, immediate action was needed to save European socialist and labor leaders, who would be prime targets of the Gestapo. The JLC compiled a list that included Jewish and non-Jewish labor leaders and socialists, as well as Yiddish writers and other activists deemed to be immediate danger. Through a network of courageous Underground couriers money was smuggled into Nazi-occupied territory to sustain the scattered remnants of East European Jewry in hiding. The JLC also supported exiled representatives of European unions and socialist parties, who took refuge in New York and made plan for the political future of their respective countries. During these years it became a conduit of U.S. government financial support for some of these groups, as well.

As the War drew to a close the immediate needs of survivors became the JLC's prime concern. By 1944 it was spending close to $1,000,000 a year, mostly on European relief. But the rescue and relief work of the JLC was not measured in dollars alone. Intangibles were just as important: knowledge of conditions in Europe; links to the underground; the ability to find jobs, homes, and care for emigres; the mobilizing of union locals to solicit large quantities of free clothing, toys, and other goods from employers; and the thousands of hours of donated labor to anti-Nazi efforts by JLC supporters.

In the spring of 1945 the JLC presented an exhibition entitled "Heroes and Martyrs of the Ghettos" at the Vanderbilt Gallery in New York. It opened on April 19, 1945, the second anniversary of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto and was the first exhibit dealing with the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance to be seen in New York - perhaps the first in America. Beginning in 1945 JLC officers and trade-union leaders, among them Nathan Chanin, David Dubinsky, Charles Zimmerman, Jacob Pat, Paul Goldman, visited European communities and DP camps and sent back searing accounts of the condition of Jewish survivors and the destruction of Jewish life. By 1947 there were still an estimated 850,000 people living in DP camps, and it was obvious that few Jewish survivors would return to their former homes. Bella Meiksin and Nathan Gierowitz, were assigned as full-time JLC representatives working in the camps of the U.S. Zone of Germany. JLC offices in Brussels and Stockholm served thousands of refugees waiting to be permanently resettled. Across Europe soup kitchens, cooperative workshops, Yiddish schools and libraries, day nurseries, and clinics were supported by JLC funds.

In New York, the JLC helped prepare lists of those who perished and those who survived and established elaborately cross-referenced card files on people seeking loved ones. Making ample use of the columns of the Forwardand of Yiddish-language radio station WEVD, the JLC tried to reunite families and publicized the needs of victims of Nazism and anti-Jewish persecution around the world. The JLC also organized a so-called "Child Adoption" Program. Its aim was not adoption in the usual sense, but rather to provide a mechanism by which Americans could contribute to the care of destitute children (mostly Jewish non-Jewish Italians)living in Europe or Palestine. At a cost of $300 per year, a union shop or local, fraternal society, Workmen's Circle branch, women's club, or any other group or individual could "adopt" a child. The money was used to supply clothes, school supplies, toys and gifts, and special food parcels. Donors received a photo of "their" adoptee(s), a biography, progress reports, and sometimes letters from the children.

In the years immediately following the War, and in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the JLC's priorities shifted in response to changing conditions in the U.S. and worldwide. While continuing its overseas programs, the Committee turned its attention more and more to anti-discrimination efforts and other work within the American trade-union movement and in the American Jewish community. That history is documented in Parts 2 and 3 of the JLC Records.

Sources:

George Berlin, "The Anti-Nazi Activities of the Jewish Labor Committee in the 1930s," MA thesis, Columbia University, 1966.--, "The Jewish Labor Committee and American Immigration Policy in the 1930s," Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History and Literature in Honor of I. Edward Kiev(New York, 1971).Catherine Collomp, "La Solidarite ethnique et politique dans l'exil: le Jewish Labor committee et les Refugies anti-nazis et anti-fascistes, 1934-1941." Materiaux pour l'Histoire de Notre Temps, No. 60 (October-December 2000), pp.23-33.Melech Epstein, Jewish Labor in the United States of America(New York: Ktav, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 384-88.Moshe R. Gottlieb, American Anti-Nazi Resistance, 1933-1941: An Historical Analysis(New York: Ktav, 1982).Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism(Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1961), pp. 162-69.Katy Hazan, Les Orphelins de la Shoah: Les Maisons de l'Espoir (1944-1960)(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2000).Will Herberg, "The Jewish Labor Movement in the United States," American Jewish Yearbook(1952): 3-74.John Herling, "Baruch Charney Vladeck," American Jewish Yearbook, (1939- 1940): 79-93. The Jewish People Past and Present, 4 vols. (New York, 1946- 1955), vol. 2, pp. 399-430.Jack Jacobs, "A Friend in Need: The Jewish Labor Committee and Refugees from the German-Speaking Lands, 1933-1945," YIVO Annual, Vol. 23 (1996), pp. 391-417.Sidney Kelman, "Limits of Consensus: Unions and the Holocaust," American Jewish History79 (Spring 1990): 336-57.David Kranzler, "The Role of Relief and Rescue during the Holocaust by the Jewish Labor Committee," in Seymour Maxwell Finger, American Jewry during the Holocaust(New York: Holmes and Meier, 1984), Appendix 4-2.Arieh Lebowitz and Gail Malmgreen, eds., Archives of the Holocaust, Volume 14: Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University – Records of the Jewish Labor Committee (New York: Garland Publishers, 1993).Gail Malmgreen, "Comrades and Kinsmen: The Jewish Labor Committee and Anti-Nazi Activity, 1934-41," in Jews, Labor and the Left, 1918-48, ed. Christine Collette and Stephen Bird (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 4-20.Gail Malmgreen, "Labor and the Holocaust: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Anti-Nazi Struggle," Labor's Heritage, Vol. 3, no. 4 (October 1991).Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust(Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press, 1983), pp. 68-69.Edward S. Shapiro, "The World Labor Athletic Carnival of 1936: An American Anti-Nazi Protest," American Jewish History 59(March 1985): 255-73.Kenneth Waltzer, "American Jewish Labor and Aid to Polish Jews during the Holocaust," unpublished paper presented at a conference of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, Washington, DC, March 1987 (on file at the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives).