The Jewish Labor Committee's support of Yiddish culture in early post-Holocaust France (1945–1948)

Abstract

ABSTRACT As soon as the liberation of Europe began, the New York-based Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) started sending material and cultural aid to Jewish and Socialist victims of Nazism. From 1948 onward, the JLC concentrated its primary efforts on reconstruction in Western Europe, particularly in France, where three quarters of the Jewish population had survived the khurbn and where many Jews from Central and Eastern Europe were settling or passing through on their way to further destinations. The dense correspondence resulting from the JLC's transatlantic work serves as the main source for this research. Through these letters sent on a daily basis, we discover both many of the stakes encountered by Holocaust survivors in their reconstruction process and the practical aspects of transnational relief. This article closely examines the contributions of the JLC to support Yiddish culture. It questions the extent to which the JLC, which was closely aligned with labour, Socialist, and Bundist groups, emphasized the political aspect of Yiddish culture. As such, it focuses on the priorities, possibilities and limits of the JLC in supporting a weakened and displaced Yiddish culture in France in the aftermath of the Holocaust and early Cold War period.