Passi Rosen-Bayewitz
A recent article in Touro Links, a magazine published by Touro Colleges Division of Graduate Studies, recounts one womans investigation into the lives of four unsung Jewish heroines. Passi Rosen-Bayewitz came to the JDC Archives to research her fourth masters thesis, which focused on Jewish women engaging in relief work abroad. A former executive director for the UJA-Federation of New York, Rosen-Bayewitz is herself no stranger to dangerous work overseas, having been arrested in 1970 by the KGB on a trip to Soviet Russia to meet with refuseniks, Jews who had been denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union.
Rosen-Bayewitz focused on the work of four women; Harriet Lowenstein, Hetty Goldman, Amelia Greenwald, and Laura Margolis. These pioneering women provided critical aid to needy Jews overseas through their work with JDC. Harriet Lowenstein was an accountant and a lawyer who served as JDCs first comptroller; she played a key role in establishing JDC’s relief effort to reach millions of starving Jews in Eastern Europe following World War I. Hetty Goldman, a prominent archaeologist, interrupted her groundbreaking work as the first woman to direct an excavation on mainland Greece to serve as JDC’s Representative in Greece and the Balkans. Amelia Greenwald, a prominent nurse and public health pioneer, founded the Jewish Nurses Training School in Poland in the 1920s. Laura Margolis, a lifelong JDC staffer, implemented JDCs World War II-era relief efforts assisting some 15,000 Jews in Shanghai.
Read the Touro Links article here.
Visit the Jewish Womens Archives blog to learn more about Hetty Goldman, Amelia Greenwald, and Laura Margolis.
