American Jewish internationalism, Laura Margolis and the power of female diplomacy, 1941–1943

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article focuses on Laura Margolis’s work for the American Joint Distribution Committee, an American Jewish philanthropic organization, as an example of the way gender shaped American international NGOs and American diplomacy more broadly during the Second World War. Margolis’s gender and Jewishness both set limits and offered unprecedented opportunities for the expression of American Jewish internationalism on the ground in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Through her use of strategies only available to a woman, Margolis was able to succeed in her mission of saving Jewish refugees in Shanghai and spreading American democratic values.