The Unitarian’s Service Committee Marseille Office and the American networks to aid Spanish refugees. (1940-1943)

Aurelio Velázquez-Hernández

doi:10.3989/chdj.2019.021

Authors

Aurelio Velázquez-Hernández https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0001-4595

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2019.021

Keywords:

Humanitarian action, International aid networks, Second World War, France, Spanish republican exile

Abstract

The Unitarian Service Committee was one of the most important US aid agencies involved in assisting refugees in the World War II context. In the article I analyse the origins of its action in Europe, focusing on a practically unknown aspect which as its intervention in favour of Spanish Republicans who had fled from Spain and the threat of Francoism in 1939. The Unitarian Service Committee (USC) began its operations in the spring of 1940 and an office of the Unitarian Service Committee would be established in Marseilles in 1941. From this office active work was focused mainly on medical help for the camp inmates in the south of France. The USC had an aid program dedicated exclusively to the Spanish refugees. This program was supported by funding from another American organization, the Joint Antifascist Refugee Committee closely linked to socialist and communist circles and whose chairman, Edward Barsky, was a former international Brigadier who had participated in the Spanish Civil War. I will analyse the links between these two organizations and their connections with international relief networks.

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