Historian: U.S. labor leaders helped rescue many from the Nazis

By Linda Myers

For a Frenchwoman to be interested in the American labor movement is rare enough. Even more surprising is the fact that Catherine Collomp, who teaches the subject at the University of Paris, has uncovered evidence -- in Cornell's and other U.S. archives -- that key players in the American labor movement of the 1930s and early 1940s helped rescue Jewish and non-Jewish European labor leaders and intellectuals from the hands of the Nazis.

Richard Strassberg, director of the Kheel archives at the ILR School's Catherwood Library, talks with Catherine Collomp, a faculty member of the University of Paris, after her talk, "The Role of American Labor in the Fight Against Nazism and Fascism," Sept. 5 in Ives Hall. Linda Myers/Cornell News Service

Collomp shared some of her findings with the Cornell campus community last Thursday, Sept. 5, during a talk in Ives Hall titled "The Role of American Labor in the Fight Against Nazism and Fascism." She also is working on a manuscript on that subject. The talk was sponsored by the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations' Catherwood Library, where Collomp conducted some of her research.

"Many of the collections, which are here to serve the needs of ILR faculty and students, have worldwide interest," said Richard Strassberg, director of the Kheel center and associate librarian at Catherwood. Collomp, who has been making yearly visits for the past four years, made use of International Ladies Garment Workers Union documents and correspondence, in particular, letters from ILGWU president David Dubinsky, Strassberg noted.

In her talk, Collomp shared a July 2, 1940, letter to Cordell Hull, secretary of state under Franklin Roosevelt. Typed on stationery of the American Federation of Labor (predecessor to today's AFL-CIO) and signed by Dubinsky and three other prominent U.S. labor leaders, the letter pleaded:

"The men and women on whose behalf we are now appealing are world-famous writers, editors, labor leaders, former government officials and ministers. ... Should they fall into the clutches of the German Gestapo [in Nazi occupied France] or the Soviet GPU [in Soviet-annexed Lithuania], they will face certain death and their loss would be irreparable for the civilized world. ... This, Honorable Sir, will be the fate of great and noble men and women, whose only crime is their firm belief in Democracy, Freedom, and Tolerance, unless they find an immediate place of refuge in the United States -- the traditional haven of all hunted and persecuted, and the only remaining one in this sad and tragic world."

As soon as the Nazis invaded France and occupied its northern sector in May and June of 1940, "there was a mass exodus to the south of France that included refugees who were German, Italian and international labor leaders," said Collomp. The Soviets annexed Lithuania later in 1940, then a refuge for former labor leaders from Poland fleeing the Nazis. "The American labor leaders immediately understood the dangers to these people," she said. They called for U.S. visas and other efforts on behalf of the refugees, most of whom were Jewish, and provided a list of 1,380 people in need of rescuing -- 352 families in France and 108 families in Lithuania. Collomp shared copies of the list -- which, she noted, was officially closed by the state department by the end of August 1940 but underwent many permutations, with names being deleted as people were arrested or lost, and added as they were identified or found.

The U.S. labor leaders were all members of a group called the Jewish Labor Committee, which was "in, above and autonomous from the U.S. labor movement itself," said Collomp, and which succeeded in rescuing over 500 people in the brief 1940-41 period when rescue was possible. While U.S. immigration laws were rigid and underwent no change during this period, the JLC argued case-by-case for the admission to the United States of the refugees, she said.

Founded in 1934, the JLC was described as "at the crossroads of Jewish and socialist labor organizations," Collomp commented. Founded by B.C. Vladeck, general manager of the Jewish Daily Forward, the prominent Yiddish-language New York newspaper, it counted among its members Dubinsky and leaders of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and Workmen's Circle.

"Their purpose was to bring a labor presence to the main Jewish organizations of the day and to impress on them that in Nazi Germany not only Jews but workers were being persecuted," said Collomp. "They also wanted to bring a Jewish presence to U.S. labor organizations. For example, at his speech at the 1934 AFL convention, Vladeck said, Jews are the barometer of the labor movement. And when they are perse
cuted, all workers are in danger."

The JLC also supported a boycott of German goods and organized a 1936 counter-Olympics in New York (to protest the one held in Germany) and various anti-fascist demonstrations and protests, Collomp said.

Collomp's talk was the first in the ILR fall series Conversations in Working Life and Culture: Interdisciplinary Talks on the History of Work. For information on the ILR library's Kheel Center collection, visit www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheelcenter/. For information on Collomp's research, contact her at collomp@paris7jussieu.fr.