Refugee Aid Begins
“I think there is nothing we need so much as something that would dramatize and would make people realize that, after all, this Liberal Gospel isn’t simply a sterile intellectualism but something that moves people to give and to work.”
- Robert Dexter
The Unitarian Service Committee worked to help displaced individuals in Europe find homes and employment in the United States during and after World War II. The beginnings of the USC can be traced to the efforts of the Sharps, who traveled to Europe under the sponsorship of the American Unitarian Association to help refugees escape Nazi occupation in 1939. In 1940, the Unitarian Service Committee was officially created under the directorship of Robert Dexter.
In response to the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, the USC filed assurances with the Displaced Persons Commission, guaranteeing that those placed by the USC would have employment, safe and sanitary housing, and would not become public charges. The USC also formed a Committee on Relief in Czechoslovakia, which was an early attempt on behalf of several agencies, including the Quakers’ American Friends Service Committee, to aid the victims of war-torn Europe. Additionally, the USC was one of eleven organizations which joined to create the 1944 Central Location Index. The Index was established to provide a list of names of dislocated people as a result of war, and to attempt in aiding friends and family ascertain the whereabouts of their loved ones.
