Author: JDC Archives

  A long-time JDC partner in delivering medical and public health assistance, Oevure de Secours aux Enfants (OSE), marked its centenary in 2012. Scholars from France, Germany, Israel, Russia, and the United States, including JDC’s Senior Archivist Mikhail Mitsel, attended a conference in Paris on the international history of OSE. Founded in St. Petersburg in 1912 as Obshchestvo Zdravookhraneniia Evreev (OZE), OSE began providing public health, medical, and feeding services to Jewish communities in the Russian Empire. It later established a vast health care network in Poland in the 1920s with JDC assistance. During World War II in France,...

Professor Tuvia Friling of the Ben-Gurion University in Israel spoke with members of the JDC staff and American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev at a joint presentation in New York on February 11th. The professor is completing a biography of Joseph J. Schwartz (1899-1975), the Joint’s Director of European Operations from 1940 to 1949. The biography is expected to be published in late 2016. In analyzing the impact of Dr. Schwartz and his organization, Professor Friling pointed to two key elements:  his personality and the circumstances under which he operated. As to the personality, he characterized Schwartz as...