The Activities of “the Joint” in Poland and Neighboring Countries 1945-1989. Reality and Perceptions

The Activities of “the Joint” in Poland and Neighboring Countries 1945-1989. Reality and Perceptions

Organisatoren
JDC Archives; POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Ort
Warschau
Land
Poland
Vom - Bis
06.08.2019 - 08.08.2019
Url der Konferenzwebsite
Von
Kim Dresel, Arolsen Archives

The thesis that communist authorities from the beginning considered the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (Joint; JDC) as the ideological enemy and accused the organization of worldwide Zionist conspiracy and espionage activities for the West accompanied the overall discussions during the GEOP Interdisciplinary Research Workshop in Warsaw. In hindsight, Anna Sommer Schneider’s question “What was the reason for the communist authorities to allow an American charity organization to operate actively in Poland?” (Panel II) can be applied to the majority of the presented states of Eastern and Southeastern Europe. In a nutshell, the lectures regarding Poland and its “neighboring countries” such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania brought to light that certain aspects and chronologies related to the JDC's changing ability of legally operating in a country often showed striking parallels. Due to unstable national currencies – in opposition to “the power of the dollar” (Rachel Rothstein) – currency exchange rates functioned as a strong political instrument of the various governments to limit or widen the Joint’s possibilities of distributing aid. But even after its expulsion from a country, the organization kept distributing social assistance and monetary funding. In Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia for example aid was provided through the Société de Secours et d’Entraide (SSE), a Geneva-based Swiss cover organization established in 1953 by the Joint, especially for this purpose. As a result of the workshop, Martin Šmok’s convincingly argued thesis does not only apply to the case of Czechoslovakia: The Joint’s supposedly clandestine operations through SSE were “not so secret” after all.

The first panel dealt with the Joint’s Work in Eastern Europe in the Immediate Postwar Period, with a focus on Poland (I), Hungary’s Szeged (II) and Yugoslavia (III). JOANNA MICHLIC (London) discussed the Joint’s so-called all humanitarian actions in Poland addressed to Christian-Polish “selfless rescuers” in the immediate postwar years. The choice to focus on a specific group of Non-Jewish Poles and to provide them with material goods and parcels for Christian holidays, was – according to Michlic – as a particularity anything but surprising: It resulted not only from the fact that many children had been abused by their rescuers and a number of Christian Poles had only helped for money. Especially in small villages Polish rescuers often faced physical violence and experienced, according to Michlic, a form of antisemitism. While looking at the provision of aid addressed to the Jewish child survivors, Michlic argued that the Joint together with the Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce (CKŻP) had to deal with complex social relations between the child, surviving relatives and the rescuers.

The visualization of the intensive work done by a small team of historians and archivists in the Szeged Jewish Archive was DÓRA PATARICZA's (Szeged) framework for her presentation. While looking at current cataloguing, digitizing and indexing projects, Pataricza could in particular shed light on the needs of Jewish survivors returning to the city, the organizational structure of the Joint’s office in Szeged (before it was later moved to Budapest) and the provision of aid in the immediate postwar years. The latter included the distribution of food, clothes, money, passports, medicine and temporary housing for former deportees, as well as the setting up of orphanages and the opening of soup-kitchens.

The unstable situation of approximately 13.000 (out of 15.000) survivors who decided to repatriate to Yugoslavia and the Joint’s role in the process of reestablishing Jewish religious life was in the focus of NAIDA-MIHAL BRANDL’s (Zagreb) presentation. Brandl discussed different types of aid provided by the Joint through the Autonomous Relief Committee Yugoslavia (ARC). The organization (as nearly the only source of funding) distributed material goods (e.g. medical aid and clothing), engaged in the rebuilding of synagogues and supported Aliyah Bet. Often huge amounts of the financial aid were lost through currency exchange rates. From the 115 prewar Jewish communities in Yugoslavia, only 38 could be reestablished after the Shoah.

The second panel was exclusively dedicated to the Joint’s activities in Poland, which received the highest amount of funding in Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. While ANNA SOMMER SCHNEIDER (Washington D.C) and ANAT KUTNER (Jerusalem) presented on the organization's legal and semi-legal activities between 1945–1957 and 1957–1967, RACHEL ROTHSTEIN (Atlanta) discussed the Joint’s semi-authorized operations through SSE after its official expulsion in 1967. The lack of governmental resources in 1945 to reestablish the destroyed country and the catastrophic situation of Jewish survivors in Poland was pointed out as one major motif of the Polish government to put ideological differences aside (Sommer Schneider). In view of conflicting US-American and Soviet interests and global geopolitics, the three speakers discussed a changing attitude towards the Joint throughout a period of more than three decades, highlighting the often contradictory aspects of ideology, economic interests and political decisions. In the focus of the presentations were Poland’s dependency on the influx of foreign currencies and material goods in opposition to the nationalization of the country’s industry leading to increased financial controls, censorship and the arrestment of Joint employers of alleged espionage. Furthermore, the benevolent attitude of the Polish communist authorities towards Jewish survivors in the postwar years as well as the special role of the Joint’s country director Akiva Kohane who was well acquainted with Polish political and sociological culture, were included in the discussion. RACHEL ROTHSTEIN shed light on the anti-Semitic campaign in 1967/68 (which led to the official expulsion of the Joint) and the challenging situation of Jewish religious communities in the country. Rothstein argued that the government’s decision to allow the JDC to operate in the country through SSE in the late 1960s and early 1970s partly resulted from concerns regarding its image and credibility in the West. After all, the Polish government benefitted from the agreement (e.g. by gaining “hard currency”) and the Joint could distribute broad support through SSE to the Jewish congregations.

The third panel shed light on the Joint’s activities in Hungary during the late 1940s and (through SSE) in the 1960s, on the organization’s relief work in Czechoslovakia after its expulsion (1950–1967) and on the Anti-“Zionist” propaganda campaign in the USSR (1950–1980). KINGA FROJIMOVICS (Vienna) discussed the Joint’s relief work in Hungary during the late 1940s in view of the Communist party’s campaign against foreigners. On the one hand the program of JDC chairman Israel Gaynor Jacobson successfully contributed to the integration of survivors into Hungarian society by enabling the community (which mostly consisted of former bankers, businessmen and manufacturers) to support itself and become independent from relief organizations. But, as Frojimovics argued, the JDC’s interest and the government’s idea of “reconstruction” only matched for a short period. When the “campaign against foreigners” reached its peak in December 1949, Jacobson was arrested under the charge of espionage. Even though the JDC officially kept sending money until its expulsion in 1953, Jacobson was the organization’s last employer operating within the country. As part of the collections of the JDC Archives Jacobson’s daily handwritten reports as well as documentation of the Hungarian Secret Service reveal information on Hungary’s Communist Party’s position towards foreign aid organizations, including the JDC.

KATA BOHUS (Leipzig) presented on the late 1950s and the early 1960s in Hungary. She argued that – after basically the whole orthodox community had left the country in 1956 – the Joint focused on Hungarian refugees coming to Vienna. Even though the JDC was not officially permitted to work in Hungary, the government negotiated a contract with the SSE in 1957 to support the remaining approximately 100.000 Hungarian Jews. But, according to the scholar (and with a view to the other lectures anything but surprising), allowing the Joint/SSE to send monetary aid to the Jewish community was motivated by high economic benefits which the Hungarian government gained through favorable exchange rates.

Under the pretext of averting “Zionist danger” Czechoslovakian Counterintelligence monitored the Joint – according to MARTIN ŠMOK (Prague) – since the beginning of its activities. But until and also after the expulsion of the organization from the country in 1950, US funds and social assistance never stopped reaching the Jews in Czechoslovakia. Among other things Šmok could shed light on show trials and major operations of the Czechoslovakian secret police (“Operation Golden Goose”; “Operation Dana”) against JDC staff and individuals involved in organizing (illegalized) Jewish social assistance. He also discussed why the Joint’s initial attempt to use Israeli operatives in Prague to distribute aid failed and argued that despite the provision of social assistance through the cover organization SSE since 1957, the locals always perceived it as money from the Joint. In view of “the Anti-'Zionist' Propaganda Campaign in the USSR and the Countries of 'People's Democracies” and based on rich archival documentation MISHA MITSEL (New York) discussed show trials in the Soviet Union among others the Slánský trial in November 1952 and the so-called Doctor’s Plot in January 1953) and the propagated image of the Joint as an espionage organization.

In the fourth panel ZVI FEINE and YECHIEL BAR-CHAIM gave insights on their personal experiences as former JDC country directors in Rumania, Poland and Czechoslovakia during the 1980s and the “post-Communist transition period.” The overall discussions brought to light that since the end of World War II the Joint was anything but an “apolitical” organization and engaged in international political affairs. In hindsight, many of the scholars pointed out the lacks in historical research. In his public keynote, DAVID ENGEL (New York) set out various – sometimes provocative – hypotheses regarding the role of the Joint and the accusation of being an espionage organization and encouraged the audience to search answers in JDC's archives. According to the JDC archivists Linda Levi, Anat Kutner, Misha Mitsel and Isabelle Rohr a large part of the collections is now accessible online.

Conference overview:

Panel I: JDC’s Work in Eastern Europe in the Immediate Postwar Period

Joanna Michlic: Doing the Right Thing: The Joint’s Efforts in the Recovery of Jewish Child Survivors and Honoring Rescuers, 1946–1948

Dóra Pataricza: The Role of JOINT in the Emigration of Jews from Czechoslovakia in the First Three Years after WWII

Naida Michal Brandl: The Role of the JDC in the Reestablishment of Jewish Religious Communities in Yugoslavia in the Aftermath of the Shoah

Panel II: JDC in Poland

Anna Sommer Schneider: Political Implications of the Joint’s Work in Communist Poland

Anat Kutner; Rebuilding a Destroyed World – Renewed JDC Activity in Poland in the Late 1950s in the Context of the Cold War

Rachel Rothstein: The Power of the Dollar: The JDC’s Work in Poland After its 1967 Expulsion

Panel III: JDC in Neighboring Countries

Kinga Frojimovics: Relief Work During a Continuous Communist Attack: JDC’s Strategy in Hungary in 1948–1949

Martin Šmok: After the Expulsion: the Not-So-Secret Social Assistance of “the Joint” in Czechoslovakia, 1950–1967

Kata Bohus: Wounded Bodies, Unbroken Spirits – The Activities of the JDC in Communist Hungary in the 1960s

Misha Mitsel: Accusations against JDC as Part of the Anti-“Zionist” Propaganda Campaign in the USSR and Countries of “People’s Democracies” (1950s–1980s)

Panel IV: JDC’s Work in Eastern Europe during the Turbulent 1980s and the Post-Communist Transition Period

Zvi Feine: Directing the JDC Programs in Romania and Poland, in 1989 – A Comparative Picture in Time

Yechiel Bar-Chaim: The Jews of Czechoslovakia and the Joint during the Post-Communist Transition

David Engel (Keynote Public Lecture): Rebuilding the Jewish World after the Holocaust: Philanthropy, Politics, and the Cold War.

Linda Levi: The JDC Archives as a Resource for Scholars – Special Film Screening: Jewish Communities in Challenging Times-Rare JDC Archival Footage from Poland and Eastern Europe.


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