http://www.holocaust-heroes.com/quakers.html
The Quakers - more formally known as the Religious Society of Friends - have a long and distinguished history of supporting social causes as well as responding to any assault on humanity. When they arrived in America during the colonial period, the Quakers befriended the Indians instead of fighting them. And as early as 1688 protested against slavery and by 1787 no member of the society was a slave owner. They also played a prominent role in supporting the agenda during the women's rights convention held in Seneca Falls, N.Y. in 1848.
The sect, which emphasizes human goodness, gained international attention with its humanitarian efforts during World War I and its aftermath. When the German army smashed into the Marne Valley in France in 1917 and leveled every building, the Quakers dispatched their own army of 100 volunteers to build portable houses in the devastated region. They also sent over a large number of tractors, plows, reapers and threshing machines to help the farmers get back on their feet. In addition, they built "the finest maternity hospital" in the city of Chalon-sur-Marne and presented it to the French government.
Even though the war ended in 1918, the Quakers continued to offer aid in critical situations. In the summer of 1919, the American Friends Service Committee sent a mission to war-ravaged Germany to determine the extent of relief required. The mission found that after four years of fighting, plus the Allied blockade, more than one million German children were on the verge of starvation.
With the swift help of Herbert Hoover, who was then in charge of the American Relief Administration, Friends immediately dispatched workers and food to centers throughout Germany. The situation was so desperate - feeding over one million famished children daily - that the Quakers continued to provide them food for four years. In many German cities, the streets where their Child Feeding Centers were established after the war are still affectionately referred to as "Quakerstrasse."
During the early years of Hitler's Third Reich, the Quakers established a reputation for their willingness to assist Jews or anyone else who sought refuge in Nazi Germany. In fact, the Quakers and the Jehovah Witnesses are the only churches which extended help to Jews in distress as a formal church policy. Hard on the heels of the Kristallnacht's warning signals in 1938, they funded Jewish immigration from Germany. They also responded to the growing problem of caring for thousands of children and infants whose parents were shipped to detention or concentration camps by taking an active role in the Kindertransport.
More than 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany and Austria were whisked to safe havens in England by the Kindertransport operation during 1938 and 1939. Ruth Vogel Schwartz, originally from Dresden, Germany, remembers her father's reaction following the violence of Kristallnacht in November, 1938. "When my father saw the burning synagogues and the looted stores, he knew he had to act quickly to save himself and his family," she recalled. "At that time, the Society of Friends was organizing transports to bring children from the potential war zones to safety in England, where sympathetic families would care for them."
She adds that she and her brother were accepted to join the transport and poignantly remembers those last few hours spent with her father. "We joined dozens of children on the rail station platform. Representatives of the Quakers arranged the loading of luggage, took constant roll calls and moved groups of children in front of the specific railroad cards they would occupy." She was sheltered in a children's camp near Harwich, England and was claimed by her family at the end of the war.
The good works of the Quakers provided them with a unique opportunity to help detained or incarcerated Jews. Early in 1940, the Vichy government authorized the Quakers, as well as Unitarians, the YMCA and the Swiss Red Cross, to enter the detention camps in southern France - Gurs, Rivesaltes and Argeles -- to carry on their humanitarian work among the refugees. The new mission gave the Quakers greater lattitude and freedom of movement in assisting Jews, frequently helping to smuggle them out of the camps and seek safety across the Swiss border. It also has been reported that some Quakers actually took up residence in the internment camps and provided the much needed food and supplies to those scheduled for deportation.
The Quakers far-reaching hand of assistance penetrated into many segments of the refugee rescue operation:
In cooperation of Pastor Andre Trocme of Le Chambon village in France, which provided a safe haven for 5,000 Jews, the Quakers established a boarding house for the refugees' children.
A "Quaker Outpost" was opened in Lisbon, Portugal to assist the unending tide of refugees pouring through the last open port in Europe. Additional outposts were established in Casablanca and Geneva.
In a joint effort with OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, the principal Jewish organization dealing with the safeguard of children), the Quakers smuggled refugee children out of the Gurs detention camp in southern France, led them on the long trek north to Switzerland and then sneaked them across the border to safety.
In America, Quaker hostels were open for refugees in Bryn Mawr, PA, Sky Island in Nyack, NY and at Scattergood in West Branch, Iowa. Staff and volunteers offered the refugees vocational counsel, gave instruction in English and provided them with job leads.
In addition to the organized aid and rescue activity, there were countless Quakers who acted alone in extending a helping hand. Here are several of these heroes and sheroes:
ELISABETH ABEGG, a native of Strassburg, Germany, met the legendary Dr. Albert Schweitzer when she was a young girl. A history teacher, she joined the faculty of the Luisen girls' school in Berlin, but was soon fired because of her anti-Nazi opinions. At the age of 50, she took an active role in a Holocaust refugee escape network comprised of Quaker friends and ministers of other denominations. She personally assisted dozens of refugees in Berlin and other parts of Germany. Once a week, usually Fridays, she invited Jews who were in hiding in cellars and condemned buildings to her apartment for a home-cooked meal and a chance to relax.
GERHARD and ELSE SCHWERSENSKY, a social worker and kindergarten teacher, respectively, were Quakers who sheltered Jews fleeing the Nazis. Both assisted
15-year-old Lorraine Jacoby who was escaping a roundup. Lorraine moved in with the Schwersenskys, who were also hiding a former employee of Berlin's Jewish communal group. Lorraine later recalled Schwersensky's philosophy: "Their religious beliefs and fierce opposition to Hitler's regime sustained them." She added that as Quakers they had a strong obligation to "take a moral stand and do everything possible to defeat Nazism."
KARL and EVA HERMANN were German Quakers who were outspoken pacifists and ciritics of the Nazis. Both were sent to prison for two years because they sheltered a Jewish couple in their home in Mannheim. When Dr. Hermann (he was a physics chemist for I.G. Farben) was elevated to the rank of the Righteous in Israel's Yad Vashem, Mrs. Hermann wrote: "I am fully conscious of the fact that my late husband and I did nothing special; we simply tried to remain human in the midst of inhumanity."
After the war, the Quakers organized a Work Camp to house volunteers and students to rebuild the devastated areas of Europe. The camp's concept and principles paved the way for the launching of Vista and the Peace Corps later in the United States.
In 1949, the American Friends Service Committee and the British Friends Service Committee were awarded a Nobel Prize for their humanitarian efforts during World War II.
