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United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA, pronounced /ˈʌnrə/ UN-rə) was an international relief agency founded in November 1943 on the joint initiative of the United States, United Kingdom, USSR, and the Republic of China. Its purpose was to "plan, co-ordinate, administer or arrange for the administration of measures for the relief of victims of war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations through the provision of food, fuel, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities, medical and other essential services". 70% of the aid originated with the United States, but 44 different countries participated in the relief in Europe and Asia. It became part of the United Nations in 1945 and was dissolved in September 1948. Its staff of civil servants included 12,000 people, with headquarters in New York. Funding came from many nations, and totalled $3.7 billion, of which the United States contributed $2.7 billion; Britain, $625 million; and Canada, $139 million.
 | |
| Abbreviation | UNRRA |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1943 |
| Type | Specialized agency |
| Legal status | Inactive |
| Headquarters | Dupont Circle Building, Washington, D.C. |
Parent organization | United Nations (from 1945) |
UNRRA cooperated closely with dozens of volunteer charitable organizations, who sent hundreds of their own staff to work alongside UNRRA. In operation for only four years, the agency distributed about $4 billion worth of goods, food, medicine, tools, and farm implements at a time of severe global shortages and worldwide transportation difficulties. The recipient nations had been especially hard hit by starvation, dislocation, and political chaos. It played a major role in helping Displaced persons return to their home countries in Europe in 1945–46.
Many of its functions were transferred to several UN agencies, including the International Refugee Organization and the World Health Organization. As an American relief project, it was later replaced by the Marshall Plan, which began operations in 1948. However, the historian Jessica Reinisch has proposed that UNRRA should not just figure as a chapter in U.S. history, but rather that UNRRA was unique in that it managed to bring together very different partners and models of international relief, each of which had their own history and antecedents.
Founding and authority
The First World War displaced more refugees than in Europeans' living memory, first from Belgium in 1914, later in eastern Europe, cf. the civil wars and new national boundaries of 1917–19. Relief was undertaken largely by private charities, often American as organized by Herbert Hoover. The Second World War seemed likely to create still more refugees, prompting governments to act: U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed the agency in June 1943, to provide relief to areas liberated from Axis Powers when the fighting ended. Roosevelt had already obtained the approval of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China; he later obtained endorsements from 40 other governments to form the first "United Nations" organization.
The Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration founding document was signed by 44 countries in the White House in Washington on 9 November 1943. UNRRA was headed by a Director-General and governed by a Council (composed of representatives of all state parties) with a Central Committee representing the United States, Britain, China, and the Soviet Union. The other countries who signed the agreement included: Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Ethiopia, the French Committee of National Liberation, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iceland, India, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.
Although the UNRRA was called a "United Nations" agency, it was established prior to the founding of the United Nations. The explanation for this is that the term "United Nations" was used at the time to refer to the Allies of World War II, having been originally coined for that purpose by Roosevelt in 1942.
Although initially restricted by its constitution to render aid only to nationals from the United Nations (the Allies), this was changed late in 1944, in response to pleas from Jewish organizations who were concerned with the fate of surviving Jews of German nationality, to also include "other persons who have been obliged to leave their country or place of origin or former residence or who have been deported therefrom by action of the enemy because of race, religion or activities in favor of the United Nations."
UNRRA operated in occupied Germany, primarily in camps for displaced persons, especially the 11,000,000 non-Germans who had been moved into Germany during the war, but did not render assistance to ethnic Germans.
In Asia, the organization provided assistance in the Dutch East Indies, Korea, and China (including Taiwan). China was the largest recipient of funds.: 59
UNRRA Headquarters was in Washington, D.C., and the European Regional Office was set up in London. The organization was subject to the authority of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) in Europe and was directed by three Americans during the four years of its existence:
- Herbert Lehman (1 January 1944−31 March 1946), former Governor of New York
- Fiorello La Guardia (1 April−31 December 1946), former Mayor of New York, who later learned that his sister Gemma and other relatives had been imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps
- Lowell Ward Rooks (1 January 1947−30 September 1948)
Operations
UNRRA funds became a point of tension in the relations between the United States and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government of China when Chiang pushed to control the disposition of funds in China to ensure that relief funds did not go to the Communist-governed areas of the country.: 39 These tensions worsened during the Chinese Civil War.: 39
By 1947, UNRRA was running nearly 800 resettlement camps, housing over 700,000 people. Forty-four nations contributed to funding, supplying, and staffing the agency, of which the United States was the leading donor. The largest recipients of UNRRA commodity aid, in millions of US dollars were China, $518; Poland – $478; Italy – $418; Yugoslavia – $416; Greece – $347; Czechoslovakia – $261; Ukraine (USSR) – $188; and Austria – $136. A number of academic assessments state that UNRRA was not perfect and was troubled by inefficiency, poor planning, shortages of supplies, and some incompetent personnel. On balance however, many argue that it was a major success in terms of delivering aid, food, and medicine, and helping Europe on the path to recovery, especially Eastern and Southern Europe.
In popular culture
The activities of the UNRRA, as well as the plight of displaced orphans in post-war Europe, is portrayed in Fred Zinnemann’s contemporaneous film The Search. The child actor in the film, Ivan Jandl, was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award and a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Karel Malik. Jandl was prohibited from attending either ceremony by the Czech communist government.
See also
- CARE
- CRALOG
- Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
- GARIOA
- Heifers for Relief
- Seagoing cowboys
- Dupont Circle Building
References
- "Legislação Informatizada - DECRETO-LEI Nº 6.987, DE 25 DE OUTUBRO DE 1944 - Publicação Original". Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.
- "Fifty Facts about UNRRA" (PDF). CVCE.eu. Washington. February 15, 1947.
- "Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration". Ibiblio.org.
- Johnson, Robert H. (1951). "International Politics and the Structure of International Organization: The Case of UNRRA". World Politics. 3 (4): 520–538. doi:10.2307/2008894. ISSN 1086-3338. JSTOR 2008894. S2CID 154554526.
- Hitchcock, 246-7
- Reinisch, Jessica (2011). "Internationalism in Relief: The Birth (and Death) of UNRRA". Past and Present (Suppl 6): 258–289. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtq050. PMID 21280357.
- "Agreement For Unrra". Ibiblio.org. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
- "Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
- Kerr, George H. (1965). Formosa Betrayed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. OL 5948105M.
- "Netherlands East Indies - Relief Program - UNARMS".
- Coble, Parks M. (2023). The Collapse of Nationalist China: How Chiang Kai-shek Lost China's Civil War. Cambridge New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-29761-5.
- "Archival Finding Aid of the UNRRA records" (PDF). Archives.un.org. Retrieved 2014-05-29.
- Gemma LaGuardia Gluck (15 Mar 2007). Fiorello's Sister: Gemma La Guardia Gluck's Story (New Expanded Edition edited by Rochelle G. Saidel of My Story, edited by S.L. Shneiderman, 1961 ed.). Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0815608615.
- New York Times, "Funeral Service Set Monday For Maj. Gen. Lowell Rooks", 12 May 1973. Retrieved 10 July 2024.
- Woodbridge, George (1950). UNRRA: the History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Columbia University Press.
- Colin Bundy, "Migrants, refugees, history and precedents." Forced Migration Review, Jan 2016
- Numbers in Woodbridge. Quoted e.g. by Hitchcock 2008 p 220
- e.g. Hitchcock, 225
Films
- U.N.R.R.A. presents In the Wake of the Armies ..., a 1944 National Film Board of Canada documentary about the U.N.R.R.A.
- The Search (Director: Fred Zinnemann, Starring: Montgomery Clift) 1948 Filmed in post-war Berlin: A story which brings to life UNRRA work in 1945 Germany.
- Sami swoi, 1967 - a Polish comedy on post-war peasant life, in which an UNRRA-delivered horse is an important action point.
Further reading
- Armstrong-Reid, Susan E., and David Murray. Armies of Peace: Canada and the UNRRA Years (2008)
- Fox, Grace. "The Origins of UNRRA," Political Science Quarterly Vol. 65, No. 4 (Dec. 1950), pp. 561–584 in JSTOR
- Hitchcock, William I. The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe (2009) pp 215–48
- Reinisch, Jessica. "'We Shall Rebuild Anew a Powerful Nation': UNRRA, Internationalism and National Reconstruction in Poland," Journal of Contemporary History, July 2008, Vol. 43 Issue 3, pp 451–476, doi:10.1177/0022009408091835
- Reinisch, Jessica. "Auntie UNRRA at the Crossroads" Past and Present, 2013, Vol. 218, Supplement 8, pp 70–97 https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gts035
- Reinisch, Jessica. "Internationalism in Relief: the Birth (and Death) of UNRRA" Past and Present, 2011, Vol. 210, Supplement 6, pp 258–289 https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtq050
- Reinisch, Jessica. "Old wine in new bottles? UNRRA and the mid-century world of refugees", in: Frank, Matthew, and Jessica Reinisch (eds), Refugees in Europe, 1919-1959: A Forty Years' Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2017)
- Shephard, Ben. 'The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War.' (Bodley Head, 2010)
- Woodbridge, George. UNRRA: the History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (Columbia University Press, 1950), the official history
- Samuel Boussian, Mathias Gardet, Martine Ruchat : L'Internationale des républiques d'enfants, 2020, éd. Anamorasa, ISBN 9791095772958
- Bialystok, Franklin. 2019. “1944: What Was Known? What Was Reported? What Was Done? What Could Have Been Done?”. Canadian Jewish Studies Études Juives Canadiennes 27 (June). https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.40105.
- Goutor, David. 1997. “The Canadian Media and the ‘Discovery’ of the Holocaust, 1944-1945”. Canadian Jewish Studies Études Juives Canadiennes 5 (January). https://doi.org/10.25071/1916-0925.19813.
External links
- Records of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) (1943-1946) at the United Nations Archives
- A popular photograph collection at the UN Archives documents the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). The collection consists of 3,530 black and white photographs covering UNRRA activities in 28 countries across six continents. Select photographs of the collection are available on flickr. XML Document
- Eisenhower's Thanksgiving Mission to Help Save UNRRA
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United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration UNRRA pronounced ˈ ʌ n r e UN re was an international relief agency founded in November 1943 on the joint initiative of the United States United Kingdom USSR and the Republic of China Its purpose was to plan co ordinate administer or arrange for the administration of measures for the relief of victims of war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations through the provision of food fuel clothing shelter and other basic necessities medical and other essential services 70 of the aid originated with the United States but 44 different countries participated in the relief in Europe and Asia It became part of the United Nations in 1945 and was dissolved in September 1948 Its staff of civil servants included 12 000 people with headquarters in New York Funding came from many nations and totalled 3 7 billion of which the United States contributed 2 7 billion Britain 625 million and Canada 139 million United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation AdministrationAbbreviationUNRRAFormation1943 82 years ago 1943 TypeSpecialized agencyLegal statusInactiveHeadquartersDupont Circle Building Washington D C Parent organizationUnited Nations from 1945 The Dupont Circle Building was the UNRRA head office in Washington DC from October 1944 UNRRA cooperated closely with dozens of volunteer charitable organizations who sent hundreds of their own staff to work alongside UNRRA In operation for only four years the agency distributed about 4 billion worth of goods food medicine tools and farm implements at a time of severe global shortages and worldwide transportation difficulties The recipient nations had been especially hard hit by starvation dislocation and political chaos It played a major role in helping Displaced persons return to their home countries in Europe in 1945 46 Many of its functions were transferred to several UN agencies including the International Refugee Organization and the World Health Organization As an American relief project it was later replaced by the Marshall Plan which began operations in 1948 However the historian Jessica Reinisch has proposed that UNRRA should not just figure as a chapter in U S history but rather that UNRRA was unique in that it managed to bring together very different partners and models of international relief each of which had their own history and antecedents Founding and authorityFranklin Roosevelt signs the pact establishing the UNRRA immediately before a national radio address 9 November 1943 The First World War displaced more refugees than in Europeans living memory first from Belgium in 1914 later in eastern Europe cf the civil wars and new national boundaries of 1917 19 Relief was undertaken largely by private charities often American as organized by Herbert Hoover The Second World War seemed likely to create still more refugees prompting governments to act U S President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed the agency in June 1943 to provide relief to areas liberated from Axis Powers when the fighting ended Roosevelt had already obtained the approval of the United Kingdom the Soviet Union and China he later obtained endorsements from 40 other governments to form the first United Nations organization Soldier of the UNRRA March 1946 The Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration founding document was signed by 44 countries in the White House in Washington on 9 November 1943 UNRRA was headed by a Director General and governed by a Council composed of representatives of all state parties with a Central Committee representing the United States Britain China and the Soviet Union The other countries who signed the agreement included Australia Belgium Bolivia Brazil Canada Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Czechoslovakia Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Ethiopia the French Committee of National Liberation Greece Guatemala Haiti Honduras Iceland India Iran Iraq Liberia Luxembourg Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland South Africa Uruguay Venezuela and Yugoslavia One of UNRRA delivered British Liberation Class locomotives named Tr202 series in Poland Mother s Day in UNRRA displaced persons camp in Germany Although the UNRRA was called a United Nations agency it was established prior to the founding of the United Nations The explanation for this is that the term United Nations was used at the time to refer to the Allies of World War II having been originally coined for that purpose by Roosevelt in 1942 Although initially restricted by its constitution to render aid only to nationals from the United Nations the Allies this was changed late in 1944 in response to pleas from Jewish organizations who were concerned with the fate of surviving Jews of German nationality to also include other persons who have been obliged to leave their country or place of origin or former residence or who have been deported therefrom by action of the enemy because of race religion or activities in favor of the United Nations UNRRA operated in occupied Germany primarily in camps for displaced persons especially the 11 000 000 non Germans who had been moved into Germany during the war but did not render assistance to ethnic Germans In Asia the organization provided assistance in the Dutch East Indies Korea and China including Taiwan China was the largest recipient of funds 59 UNRRA Headquarters was in Washington D C and the European Regional Office was set up in London The organization was subject to the authority of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces SHAEF in Europe and was directed by three Americans during the four years of its existence Herbert Lehman 1 January 1944 31 March 1946 former Governor of New York Fiorello La Guardia 1 April 31 December 1946 former Mayor of New York who later learned that his sister Gemma and other relatives had been imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps Lowell Ward Rooks 1 January 1947 30 September 1948 OperationsUNRRA funds became a point of tension in the relations between the United States and Chiang Kai shek s Nationalist government of China when Chiang pushed to control the disposition of funds in China to ensure that relief funds did not go to the Communist governed areas of the country 39 These tensions worsened during the Chinese Civil War 39 By 1947 UNRRA was running nearly 800 resettlement camps housing over 700 000 people Forty four nations contributed to funding supplying and staffing the agency of which the United States was the leading donor The largest recipients of UNRRA commodity aid in millions of US dollars were China 518 Poland 478 Italy 418 Yugoslavia 416 Greece 347 Czechoslovakia 261 Ukraine USSR 188 and Austria 136 A number of academic assessments state that UNRRA was not perfect and was troubled by inefficiency poor planning shortages of supplies and some incompetent personnel On balance however many argue that it was a major success in terms of delivering aid food and medicine and helping Europe on the path to recovery especially Eastern and Southern Europe In popular cultureThe activities of the UNRRA as well as the plight of displaced orphans in post war Europe is portrayed in Fred Zinnemann s contemporaneous film The Search The child actor in the film Ivan Jandl was awarded a special Academy Juvenile Award and a Golden Globe Award for his portrayal of Karel Malik Jandl was prohibited from attending either ceremony by the Czech communist government See alsoCARE CRALOG Chinese National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration GARIOA Heifers for Relief Seagoing cowboys Dupont Circle BuildingReferences Legislacao Informatizada DECRETO LEI Nº 6 987 DE 25 DE OUTUBRO DE 1944 Publicacao Original Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Fifty Facts about UNRRA PDF CVCE eu Washington February 15 1947 Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Ibiblio org Johnson Robert H 1951 International Politics and the Structure of International Organization The Case of UNRRA World Politics 3 4 520 538 doi 10 2307 2008894 ISSN 1086 3338 JSTOR 2008894 S2CID 154554526 Hitchcock 246 7 Reinisch Jessica 2011 Internationalism in Relief The Birth and Death of UNRRA Past and Present Suppl 6 258 289 doi 10 1093 pastj gtq050 PMID 21280357 Agreement For Unrra Ibiblio org Retrieved 2012 05 14 Agreement for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Jewishvirtuallibrary org Retrieved 2012 05 14 Kerr George H 1965 Formosa Betrayed Boston Houghton Mifflin OL 5948105M Netherlands East Indies Relief Program UNARMS Coble Parks M 2023 The Collapse of Nationalist China How Chiang Kai shek Lost China s Civil War Cambridge New York NY Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 009 29761 5 Archival Finding Aid of the UNRRA records PDF Archives un org Retrieved 2014 05 29 Gemma LaGuardia Gluck 15 Mar 2007 Fiorello s Sister Gemma La Guardia Gluck s Story New Expanded Edition edited by Rochelle G Saidel of My Story edited by S L Shneiderman 1961 ed Syracuse University Press ISBN 978 0815608615 New York Times Funeral Service Set Monday For Maj Gen Lowell Rooks 12 May 1973 Retrieved 10 July 2024 Woodbridge George 1950 UNRRA the History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Columbia University Press Colin Bundy Migrants refugees history and precedents Forced Migration Review Jan 2016 Numbers in Woodbridge Quoted e g by Hitchcock 2008 p 220 e g Hitchcock 225FilmsU N R R A presents In the Wake of the Armies a 1944 National Film Board of Canada documentary about the U N R R A The Search Director Fred Zinnemann Starring Montgomery Clift 1948 Filmed in post war Berlin A story which brings to life UNRRA work in 1945 Germany Sami swoi 1967 a Polish comedy on post war peasant life in which an UNRRA delivered horse is an important action point Further readingArmstrong Reid Susan E and David Murray Armies of Peace Canada and the UNRRA Years 2008 Fox Grace The Origins of UNRRA Political Science Quarterly Vol 65 No 4 Dec 1950 pp 561 584 in JSTOR Hitchcock William I The Bitter Road to Freedom The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe 2009 pp 215 48 Reinisch Jessica We Shall Rebuild Anew a Powerful Nation UNRRA Internationalism and National Reconstruction in Poland Journal of Contemporary History July 2008 Vol 43 Issue 3 pp 451 476 doi 10 1177 0022009408091835 Reinisch Jessica Auntie UNRRA at the Crossroads Past and Present 2013 Vol 218 Supplement 8 pp 70 97 https doi org 10 1093 pastj gts035 Reinisch Jessica Internationalism in Relief the Birth and Death of UNRRA Past and Present 2011 Vol 210 Supplement 6 pp 258 289 https doi org 10 1093 pastj gtq050 Reinisch Jessica Old wine in new bottles UNRRA and the mid century world of refugees in Frank Matthew and Jessica Reinisch eds Refugees in Europe 1919 1959 A Forty Years Crisis Bloomsbury 2017 Shephard Ben The Long Road Home The Aftermath of the Second World War Bodley Head 2010 Woodbridge George UNRRA the History of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Columbia University Press 1950 the official history Samuel Boussian Mathias Gardet Martine Ruchat L Internationale des republiques d enfants 2020 ed Anamorasa ISBN 9791095772958 Bialystok Franklin 2019 1944 What Was Known What Was Reported What Was Done What Could Have Been Done Canadian Jewish Studies Etudes Juives Canadiennes 27 June https doi org 10 25071 1916 0925 40105 Goutor David 1997 The Canadian Media and the Discovery of the Holocaust 1944 1945 Canadian Jewish Studies Etudes Juives Canadiennes 5 January https doi org 10 25071 1916 0925 19813 External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Records of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration UNRRA 1943 1946 at the United Nations Archives A popular photograph collection at the UN Archives documents the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration UNRRA The collection consists of 3 530 black and white photographs covering UNRRA activities in 28 countries across six continents Select photographs of the collection are available on flickr XML Document Eisenhower s Thanksgiving Mission to Help Save UNRRA