David Glick's JDC mission to South America

David Glick's JDC mission to South America 

In 1936, at the behest of Paul Baerwald and Felix Warburg and the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), David Glick, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania attorney, traveled to Germany to act as an independent liaison between Nazi officials and Jewish organizations. His primary objective in this capacity was to assist German Jews in leaving the country, through whatever legal means possible. He met with Heinrich Himmler (Head of the Secret State Police), Reinhard Heydrich (head of Security Services), Dr. Karl Haselbacher (Deputy in Charge of the 'Jewish Problem'), and Dr. Werner Best (Deputy Leader of the Secret State Police). From 1936-38, David Glick, as the unofficial representative of the JDC in Germany, criss-crossed the country meeting with leaders of major Jewish organizations and members of various congregations. Much of his work was conducted at great risk to his own personal safety. He worked with the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (The Council for the Representation of Jews in the Third Reich), and the U.S. and British governments to assist thousands of German Jews in emigrating to Palestine and South America. In 1937 he successfully negotiated the release and emigration of 120 of the 300 Jews who were then prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp. In 1939, David Glick visited every country in South America on behalf of the JDC to survey the needs of the German and Austrian refugees who had settled there. He brought with him a 16mm camera, and he filmed his experiences with the new refugees in many of these countries. The films in this collection are the only photographic documentation known to exist of David Glick's journeys. They are a testament to the work that a private American citizen was carrying out on behalf of the Jews of Germany when the official U.S. government policy had yet to acknowledge the extent of Adolf Hitler's plans to eradicate European Jewry. 

David Glick's JDC mission to South America