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World War II Voluntary Service Archives



Dear Friends:

I believe you have an email from Wendy Chmielewski of the Swarthmore
College Peace Collection relative to the collection of Civilian Public
Service materials there.  These materials were deposited by the American
Friends Service Committee (AFSC) as Wendy has indicated.

In our archives collection located here in Philadelphia, we have additional
materials relating to men and women who served in various voluntary
positions abroad during World War II.  Our organization sent medical
volunteers to China to join the Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), which was a
British group operating there.  There is correspondence in our collection
about this group.  There is also a colleciton of personal letters written
by a physcian the AFSC sent to join the FAU.  This is an interesting
collection focusing on the work and his observations of China and its
people.  We also had work in the South of France through the war years.  At
first British and American Quakers operated in France, but, with the
armistice between Germany and France, the British had to leave.  Americans
worked in Vichy France, on behalf of refugees collected there, until the
Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942.  At that time they were
arrested and interned in Germany until their exchange for German nationals
arrested in the United States.  There is an interesting diary kept by the
head of the French unit describing the incarceration in an hotel in Baden
Baden.  In addition to work on behalf on refugees in France, there were
Quaker workers expediting travel for refugees in Lisbon and working on
behalf of refugees in North Africa.  All of these materials are of
considerable interest, and I think form a valuable resource for any
scholar.  I might add that all through the war, the Quakers continued to be
represented by a small group of women in the South of France.  These women
were nationals of a variety of European countries, and contributed a great
deal to saving Jews and others who were either added in escaping from
France or were hidden until the withdrawal of the Nazis.

Possibly this information would be of value to post?

Sincerely,

Jack Sutters
Archives

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