Assisting the victims of war: 'nations will learn to work together only by actually working together.' (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration)

AuthorFruchtbaum, Harold

The activity at the White House on 9 November 1943 was unusual even for wartime Washington. Ambassadors and other officials of the 44 Governments allied in the global conflict, then in its fifth year, were gathering in the high-ceiling East Room to sign the agreement, negotiated over two years, establishing the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). Its mandate: to assist and resettle displaced victims of the war. Military advances on several fronts made the creation of UNRRA imperative if the people liberated from enemy control were to receive, in the words of the agreement, "aid and relief from their sufferings".

After the last signature, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had signed on behalf of the United States, spoke to his guests seated around an elegant table in the East Room. "My friends", he said, "when victory come there can certainly be no secure peace until there is a return of law and order in the oppressed countries, until the peoples of these countries have been restored to a normal, healthy and self-sustaining existence."

"As in most of the difficult and complex things in life", he said, "nations will learn to work together only by actually working together. Why not? The nations have common objectives. It is, therefore, with a lift of hope, that we look on the signing of this agreement by all of the United Nations as a means of joining them together still more firmly."

Beginning the next day--10 November--and cqntinuing through I December, UNRRA's policy-making Council, made up of one representative of each member, met in Atlantic City, New Jersey to launch the work of the infant agency. The Council appointed Herbert H. Lehman, adviser to President Roosevelt on war relief and rehabilitation, as Director-General. Working through committees, the Council pressed forward with planning.

Before the end of 1943, Iceland...

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