Holocaust Rescue and Relief

New outfits for an entire Spanish family at the Toulouse Clothing Distribution Center in France.
New outfits for an entire Spanish family at the Toulouse Clothing Distribution Center in France.

The Harvard Divinity School Library is the official archive for the records of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC). To view the material related to their humanitarian work in World War II, scroll down and select a collection name, and then select "digital material".

In 1939, the Rev. Waitstill Sharp, a Unitarian minister in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and his wife, Martha, a social worker, agreed to travel to Prague to investigate reports of a humanitarian crisis. From these humble but brave beginnings, the Unitarian Service Committee was born. During and after World War II, the Service Committee aided hundreds of displaced persons in Europe. They established food and clothing distribution centers, hospitals, and homes for children. They also aided hundreds of people in their efforts to leave war-torn Europe and establish new lives for themselves in the United States.

In a project jointly funded by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris, the library completed a massive digitization project to preserve this material for future generations and make it available to researchers throughout the world. To read more about this digitization project, see the Harvard Gazette.

Each collection covers a wide variety of subjects, and the name of each collection does not indicate all the subjects covered in that collection. For instance, the records of William Emerson cover such diverse subjects as the Spanish refugees in France; Communist charges leveled against the USC; child care in post-war Germany; milk distribution in France; and the post-war medical missions conducted by the Service Committee throughout Europe.

If you have questions about these collections, please contact Research Services.

Executive Director Records

These records contain letters and reports from a wide variety of correspondents and they cover many subjects. They were transferred to the library from USC headquarters over a period of several years, and therefore the collections have overlapping dates.

General Administrative Records

These records contain letters and reports from a wide variety of correspondents and they cover many subjects. They were transferred to the library from USC headquarters over a period of several years, and therefore the collections have overlapping dates. UUA Administrative records were digitized after the HDS Library project was completed. It includes information about the Righteous Among the Gentiles award bestowed on Martha and Waitstill Sharp by Yad Vashem in 2006.

Fund Raising and Publicity Records

Case Files

These records include requests from individuals displaced by World War II for assistance with housing, employment, health care, and other needs. The two collections listed here are not the only ones that contain case file information; case file information is found scattered through many of the other collections.

Special Initiatives

Photographs

Scrapbooks