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ABSTRACT
In 1943 the British Quaker organization, the Friends Relief Service (FRS), established a training programme to prepare volunteers and members for post-war relief work. Located in London, the programme centred on Quaker pacifist tradition and conviction, drew upon instances of relief work during and after the Great War, and integrated the experience and expertise of relief workers in the field. Unlike the international organizations and Allied governments who defined ‘rehabilitation’ as economic and political reconstruction, the FRS considered the rehabilitation of the community and spirit of displaced and refugee populations as essential to the process of structural rebuilding in post-war Europe. Thus, a central mandate of the FRS was to encourage reconciliation and foster internationalism among former enemies. This article examines how the FRS prepared members for post-war reconciliation work and the application of training by FRS teams in the British Occupation Zone in Germany between 1945 and 1947. This work will underscore the role of professionalization, as expressed in formal training for post-war relief work, within the FRS, while also illustrating the challenges, limitations and opportunities in cultivating reconciliation among displaced persons (DP), refugees and local German populations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. “Working for the Germans,” 164; Zahra, “Lost Children,” 47; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 51; Cohen, In War’s Wake, 65–6; Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid,” 215; and Rodogno, Gauthier, and Piana, “The League of Nations Mission in Western Thrace,” 147.
2. “Reconciliation”; and Staub, “Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict,” 868.
3. Staub, “Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict,” 868; Staub, “Reconciliation between Groups,” 971; and Staub, Overcoming Evil.
4. Staub, “Reconciliation after Genocide, Mass Killing, or Intractable Conflict”; Staub, “Reconciliation between Groups”; Lederrach, Building Peace; Höglund and Sundberg, “Reconciliation through Sports?”; and Long and Brecke, War and Reconciliation.
5. Long and Brecke, War and Reconciliation, 7.
6. Brock, Pacifism in Europe to 1914; and Punshon, Portrait in Grey.
7. Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation, 9–22.
8. Ibid., 24.
9. Von Borries, Quiet Helpers; Schmitt, Quakers and Nazis; Greenwood, Quaker Encounters; Carter, “The Quaker International Center in Berlin, 1920–1942”; and Byrd, Quaker Ways in Foreign Policy.
10. Yarrow, Quaker Experience in International Conciliation; Frank, “Working for the Germans”; Carson, “The Friends Relief Service – Faith into Action”; and Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People.”
11. Frank, “Working for the Germans,” 159.
12. Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People,” 225.
13. Carson, “The Friends Relief Service – Faith into Action”; Carson, “The Quaker Internationalist Tradition in Displaced Persons Camps”; Gemie et al., Outcast Europe; Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People”; and Frank, “Working for the Germans.”
14. Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid,” 215, 225–6.
15. Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid,” 226; Marshall, “The Construction of Children as an Object of International Relations”; and Weindling, “From Sentiment to Science.”
16. Carson, “The Friends Relief Service – Faith into Action,” 89–91; Carson, “The Quaker Internationalist Tradition in Displaced Persons Camps,” 68, 72; Gemie et al., Outcast Europe, 148, 175–76; and Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People,” 236–38.
17. Salvatici, “Help the People to Help Themselves.”
18. Humbert, “Not by Bread Alone?” n.d., 224.
19. Humbert, “Not by Bread Alone?,” 2014.
20. Reinisch, “Old Wine in New Bottles?” 157.
21. Ibid., 165–6.
22. “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918–1939,” 1.
23. Wilson, Quaker Relief, 103.
24. Ibid., 105.
25. Wilson, Quaker Relief.
26. Copeman, “Tom Copeman Correspondence.”
27. Friends War Relief Service, “Notes on the Project for a Training Centre for Relief Work Abroad.”
28. Wilson, Quaker Relief, 106–7, 122–4.
29. Ibid., 121.
30. “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918–1939.”
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Wilson, Quaker Relief, 231. The camp was named Gypsy, or ‘Gipsy,’ by the US military who occupied the camp prior. In May 1948, the Friends Relief Service was absorbed by the Friends Service Council, which became the permanent overseas relief body of the Religious Society of Friends in Great Britain and in Ireland.
34. Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June 29, 1946.
35. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 14, 31 May 1946.”
36. Wyman, DPs, 62, 69; Cohen, In War’s Wake, 27; Knowles, Winning the Peace, 174; Cabanes, The Great War, 126; and Knapton, “There Is No Such Thing as an Unrepatriable Pole,” 690.
37. Proudfoot, European Refugees, 238–9.
38. Knapton, “There Is No Such Thing as an Unrepatriable Pole,” 698; Wyman, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 71; and Shephard, The Long Road Home, 242–4.
39. Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June 29, 1946; Shephard, The Long Road Home, 210–14; Wyman, DPs, 81; and Wilson, Quaker Relief, 231.
40. Shephard, The Long Road Home, 210–14.
41. Bracey, “Europe’s Displaced Persons and Problems of Relocation”; and “Course I: Refugees 5 Possible Solutions to the Relocation Problem.”
42. “Course I: Refugees 5 Possible Solutions to the Relocation Problem.”
43. McNeill, “Personal Journal, June 1945–April 1946.”
44. Parkinson, “J.M. Parkinson to Ronald Hadley,” June 1945; Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June29, 1946; McNeill, “Personal Journal, June 1945–April 1946”; and McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon, 36.
45. Parkinson, “J.M. Parkinson to Ronald Hadley,” June 1945; Parkinson, “Report to Friends House,” June 29, 1946; McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon, 36; McNeill, “Personal Journal, October 1946–May 1947”; Knapton, “There Is No Such Thing as an Unrepatriable Pole,” 695–6; and Wyman, DPs, 108.
46. “Course I: European Background 8 Hungary and Bulgaria.”
47. Tajfel, “Social Identity and Intergroup Behaviour”; and Tajfel and Turner, “An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict.”
48. Locke and Johnston, “Stereotyping and Prejudice”; “Stereotypes and Prejudice”; and Billig, “Prejudice, a Categorization and Particularization.”
49. Aksamit, “Training Friends and Overseas Relief,” 177–8.
50. McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon, 93.
51. Ibid.
52. Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics,” 445; Persian, “Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categorisation(s),” 20; and Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism, 44–5.
53. Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics,” 446.
54. Ibid.
55. “Extracts from the Minutes of the 2nd Germany Regional Conference,” 1.
56. “Course I: Refugees 2 The Refugee Problem.”
57. Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, April 1947.”
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.
60. “Course I: Refugees 1 Relief Work for Refugees”; “Course I: Refugees 5 Possible Solutions to the Relocation Problem”; “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937–40)”; “Course I: Informal Talk ‘The Relief Worker and Practical Problems’”; and “Course I: Informal Talks Dutch Relief Plans.”
61. “Course I: Refugees 6 The Administration of Refugee Camps (with Particular Reference to Spain and France 1937–40),” 3.
62. Aksamit, “Training Friends and Overseas Relief.”
63. Carson, “The Friends Relief Service – Faith into Action,” 102; Reid and Gemie, “The Friends Relief Service and Displaced People,” 231; and Carson, “The Quaker Internationalist Tradition in Displaced Persons Camps,” 75.
64. “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918–1939.”
65. Marrack,“RS124 Goslar, German Welfare Work, General Activities Report No. 1 (June 1946) 2 July 1946.”
66. McNeill, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report, April 1947.”
67. “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, March 1947.”
68. Ibid.
69. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report, September 30 1946”; Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report, October 31 1946”; Weiss, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, February 1947”; and “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, March 1947.”
70. “Course I: Informal Talk ‘Experience in Serbian Refugee Communities (1914–18 War)’.”
71. Ibid.
72. Carson, “The Quaker Internationalist Tradition in Displaced Persons Camps,” 77.
73. Carson, “The Quaker Internationalist Tradition in Displaced Persons Camps,” 73–4, 78–9; Aksamit, “Training Friends and Overseas Relief,” 25; and Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid, 3.
74. Simpson, “The Refugee Problem,” 620; and “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.”
75. “Course I: Refugees 4 Possible Solutions to the Refugee Problem.”
76. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 14, May 31 1946”; Knapton, “There Is No Such Thing as an Unrepatriable Pole,” 697; and Wyman, DPs, 161.
77. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 15, July 13 1946.”
78. Marrack.
79. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report No. 17, August 31 1946”; and McNeill, By the Rivers of Babylon, 133.
80. Wilson, Quaker Relief, 234.
81. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report, September 30, 1946.”
82. Aksamit, “Training Friends and Overseas Relief,” 229.
83. Weiss, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, February 1947.”
84. “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, March 1947.”
85. Ibid.
86. Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, May 1947”; and Shephard, The Long Road Home, 282.
87. Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, April 1947”; and Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, May 1947.”
88. Proudfoot, European Refugees, 255.
89. Ibid., 80.
90. “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918–1939.”
91. Weindling, “From Sentiment to Science: Children’s Relief Organizations and the Problem of Malnutrition in Inter-War Europe,” 203; and Lassonde, “Age, Schooling, and Development.”
92. Weindling, “From Sentiment to Science,” 203.
93. Ibid., 204–5; and Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid,” 226.
94. “Course I: Refugees 11 The Care of Children,” 1.
95. Ibid. 2.
96. Marshall, “The Construction of Children as an Object of International Relations,” 137; Gill, “‘The Rational Administration of Compassion’”; Zahra, “Lost Children”; and Marshall, “International Child Saving.”
97. Zahra, “Lost Children,” 53.
98. Marrack, “RS124 Goslar, German Welfare Work, General Activities Report No. 1 (July 1946) 26 July 1946.”
99. McNeill, “RS124 Goslar General Activities Report, April 1947.”
100. McNeill.
101. Ibid.
102. Zagrean et al., “The Family Transmission of Ethnic Prejudice,” 12; Raabe and Beelmann, “Development of Ethnic, Racial, and National Prejudice in Childhood and Adolescence”; and Crocetti et al., “Development of Prejudice Against Immigrants and Ethnic Minorities in Adolescence.”
103. Rodriquez-Garcia and Wagner, “Learning to Be Prejudiced”; and Dhont and Van Hiel, “Intergroup Contact Buffers Against the Intergenerational Transmission of Authoritarianism and Racial Prejudice.”
104. “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, January 1947.”
105. Weiss, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, February 1947.”
106. Ibid.
107. Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, April 1947.”
108. Southwell, “RS100 Brunswick Team Report, May 1947.”
109. Jones, “Sport and Friendship”; Stidder and Haasner, “Developing Outdoor and Adventurous Activities for Co-Existence and Reconciliation in Israel”; Höglund and Sundberg, “Reconciliation through Sports? The Case of South Africa,” 811; Dunn, “Reconciliation and Rugby in Post-Apartheid South Africa”; Wood, “Football after Yugoslavia”; and Gilbert and Bennett, Sport, Peace and Development.
110. Munro, “Sport for Peace and Reconciliation,” 74.
111. Ibid., 77.
112. Ibid., 79.
113. “Sport for Development and Peace.”
114. Quakers in the World, “Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW).”
115. Ibid.
116. “Course I: Quakerism 3, 4 & 5 The Development of Quaker Life and Thought, 1918–1939.”
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Nerissa Aksamit
Nerissa Aksamit received her Ph.D. in History from West Virginia University in 2019 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Modern European History at St. Joseph’s University in Patchogue, New York. She is a social and cultural historian of modern European history with specializations in twentieth-century war and society, Britain and Empire, Gender and Women’s Studies, and Public History. Her primary research interests are the transnational dimensions and impacts of the Second World War on societies and institutions in Britain and Germany.