Jewish Labor Committee - History

History

The Jewish Labor Committee was formed in February 1934, in response to the rise of Nazism in Germany, by Yiddish-speaking immigrant trade union leaders, including leaders of established groups such as the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, the Jewish Labor Bund, and the United Hebrew Trades. Representatives assembled at a conference on New York's Lower East Side, electing its first president, Baruch Charney Vladeck, and charging it with the following tasks:

• support of Jewish labor institutions in European countries;
• assistance to the anti-Hitler underground movement;
• aid to the victims of Nazism;
• cooperation with American organized labor in fighting anti-democratic forces; and
• combating anti-semitism and other effects of Fascism and Nazism upon American life.

At the 1934 convention of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), Vladeck argued that the Nazi persecution of Jews was part of a general assault on labor rights and political liberty. The AFL agreed and in response it created the "Labor Chest" to aid victims of fascism; in the following years, the Chest funded a host of JLC-inspired educational and aid projects.

During the first five years of its existence, the Jewish Labor Committee concentrated mainly on supporting anti-Nazi labor forces in Europe and sending relief to Jewish labor institutions there, especially those maintained by the Jewish Labor and the "left" Labor Zionist movement (the "right" Labor Zionists organized their own relief and rehabilitation committee), and encouraging and strengthening U.S. and Canadian opposition to the Nazis, in the labor and democratic left, as well as in the community-at-large. At the same time it organized mass anti-Nazi demonstrations; in 1936, with the American Jewish Congress, through the Joint Boycott Council, it conducted a boycott on German goods and services. At the urging of BC Vladeck and Jewish union leaders, the AFL came out in favor of a boycott of Nazi goods at its 1933 convention.

After the outbreak of World War II, the emphasis focused on efforts to save Jewish cultural and political figures, as well as Jewish and non-Jewish labor and socialist leaders facing certain death at the hands of the Nazis. With powerful help from the American Federation of Labor, the Committee succeeded in bringing over a thousand of such individuals to the United States, or to temporary shelter elsewhere.

The JLC's main focus was unified action, but also took independent action for their anti-Nazi campaign. When the American Olympics Committee declined to boycott the Berlin Olympics of 1936, the JLC held a World Labor Athletic Carnival (also known as the Counter-Olympics) at Randall's Island in New York City. Dozens of teams representing New York union locals competed, and featured amateur athletes from across the country. NY Governor Herbert Lehman presented the awards. The Carnival received extensive nationwide press coverage, and the JLC repeated the event in the summer of 1937.

After the war, the JLC organized a Child Adoption Program. The program was not meant to provide adoption in the usual sense, but rather to provide a mechanism by which Americans could contribute to the care of children living in Europe or Israel. At a cost of $300 per year, a union shop or local, fraternal society, Workmen's Circle branch, women's club, or any other group or individual could "adopt" a child. Thousands of children were supported through this program into the 1950s.

Beginning in the late 1930s, the Committee became increasingly concerned with Jewish defense work and community relations in the United States. It was one of the four founders of the short-lived General Jewish Council and helped organize the National Community Relations Advisory Council (renamed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) in the 1990s), of which it is still an active member.