Geneva.
The High Commissioner for Refugees (Jewish and others) from Germany has published a pamphlet describing the work done during the past two years to assist the university teachers displaced in Germany by the political revolution in 1933. It is an impressive record. Of about 650 scholars who have left Germany 248 have already been re-established in permanent positions, and it is interesting to see that forty are in the University of Istanbul and eighteen in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, while others are distributed throughout the world. Facilities for continuing their studies or research in universities or other appropriate institutions have been given to 336 of the remainder. In short, almost all the displaced scholars in exile have been retained within the university sphere, a magnificent demonstration of support for the principle of the preservation of learning.
This means that a group of university teachers nearly as large as the whole staff of Cambridge University has been either permanently or temporarily accommodated in the institutions of higher learning outside Germany. Since the German foreign exchange restrictions ensured that few of the scholars had financial resources outside their country, maintenance has been provided from non-German sources.
Universities, in all but a few instances, could not use their normal funds for this purpose; the most that they were justified in doing in this crisis was to incur the expenses involved in offering hospitality in laboratories and libraries. Almost the full financial burden has been met from funds especially raised for the purpose by emergency academic committees in Europe and the United States. These special committees have collected nearly $10,000,000 during the past two years, and used this #m in grants-in-aid, loans for traveling expenses, etc.
In a foreword to the pamphlet the High Commissioner, James G. McDonald, points out that, in contrast to the financial support for other work on behalf of the German refugees, funds for the academic work “have been contributed without distinction of creed or race.” It is one of the most gratifying aspects of the work of the Academic Assistance Council in this country that substantial support should have been received from both Jewish and non-Jewish sources. The Jewish community, in spite of its heavy responsibilities for general relief work, has contributed $25,000 to the council funds through the Central British Fund for German Jewry. In addition the council received $29,000 from certain Jewish trusts and family contributions. A large proportion of the remainder of the $140,000, contributed for the most part in small donations and subscriptions, has come from non-Jewish sources. In particular, university teachers and university gradues have given generously.
Apart from substantial individual donations, many small donations of a few shillings have come from persons of limited means who wished to be associated with the work.
There remains the second half of the task to be accomplished; the academic committees’ plans for the future are described in outline in the pamphlet. In many ways the future work will be harder than the past. Although great experience has been gained, although the work of assistance has been coordinated on an international basis, and although the nature of the problem is now known, there are new difficulties which almost outweigh these advantages.
The international task is to transfer the 366 temporarily placed scholars into more permanent positions and to maintain them during this process in positions where they may continue their studies. Several of the committees on the Continent doubt if they can continue to support their guests.
Many of the scholars requiring further assistance are engaged in subjects such as philosophy and classics, where the field of absorption is more limited than in the natural sciences, in which there has so far been most success in permanent placement. A majority of the temporarily placed persons are younger men and women without the international reputation which made it easier to assist their senior colleagues to re-establish themselves; yet it is this younger age group, because of its potential importance in future research, which deserves and needs extraordinary assistance in re-establishment.
The time has come for final plans, and the committees outline their proposals in this pamphlet. The Academic Assistance Council has the following program for the future. It wishes to continue its international information service and investigations for openings; to continue a system of grants-in-aid to about seventy of the displaced scholars for not more than two years; to subsidize occasional short lecture courses in Great Britain for those of the displaced scholars who are able to support themselves in Germany but have otherwise no opportunity of announcing the results of their research or of maintaining contact with their colleagues; and to create twenty special research fellowships, awarded in the first place for three years, which will enable us to retain for this country the services of some of the most distinguished or promising of our guests. This is a manageable task, and if enabled to complete it the council will have made the most substantial contribution to the solution of the total problem.
Adolphus Simeon Solomonus was one of the incorporators of the National Association of the American Red Cross.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
