In the summer of 1938, a group of young Quakers in Iowa wrote a letter to American Friends Service Committee volunteering to host refugees from Nazi Germany at their summer camp. That led to the launch of Scattergood Hostel, the largest grassroots relief effort in the United States in response to the Holocaust.
“It was a perfect wedding of an existing desire to help and then the need for help,” reflects Michael Luick-Thrams, a Quaker historian who has written about Scattergood. “It happened to be the Quakers, it happened to be in Iowa, and it needs to be told and preserved.”
Transcript and Discussion Questions Available Here
Produced by Rebecca Hamilton-Levi
In partnership with Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Comments on Friendsjournal.org may be used in the Forum of the print magazine and may be edited for length and clarity.