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Robert Dexter
Robert Cloutman Dexter (1887 – 1955) was the founder of the Unitarian Service Committee (progenitor of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee), which worked before and during World War II to rescue and assist refugees from Nazi Germany.Morton, Suzanne, ''Wisdom, Justice and Charity: Canadian Social Welfare through the Life of Jane B. Wisdom, 1884-1975''. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2014. (p. 74) Dexter headed the Unitarian's office in Lisbon, Portugal during World War II. The Unitarians and other humanitarian organizations helped thousands of intellectuals and artists, many of them Jews, fleeing the Nazis to emigrate to safety in the United States and other countries. Dexter also worked with the clandestine Office of Strategic Services (OSS), providing information about Nazi Germany to the U.S. from his network of refugee workers in France, Spain, and Portugal. Early life Dexter was born on October 1, 1887, in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, Shelburne, Nova Scotia of ...
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Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) is a non-profit, nonsectarian associate member organization of the Unitarian Universalist Association that works to provide disaster relief and promote human rights and social justice around the world. UUSC was founded in May 1940 as the Unitarian Service Committee with the intended purpose of assisting European refugees endangered by Nazi persecution. The founding director was Robert Dexter, who had served in a diplomatic role for the American Unitarian Association for more than a decade and had been moved, in particular, by the plight of refugees in Czechoslovakia, a country with a large Unitarian congregation. The organization established an office in Lisbon and the first American Unitarians to be posted there were Rev. Waitstill Hastings Sharp, a minister of the Unitarian Church in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and his wife Martha. Later, Rev. Charles Joy, Elisabeth Anthony Dexter and Noel Field were recruited to wo ...
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Vichy France
Vichy France (; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was a French rump state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II, established as a result of the French capitulation after the Battle of France, defeat against Germany. It was named after its seat of government, the city of Vichy. Officially independent, but with half of its Metropolitan France, territory occupied under the harsh terms of Armistice of 22 June 1940, the 1940 armistice with Nazi Germany, it adopted Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a policy of collaboration. Though Paris was nominally its capital, the government established itself in Vichy in the unoccupied "free zone" (). The German military administration in occupied France during World War II, occupation of France by Germany at first affected only the northern and western portions of the country. In November 1942, the Allies Operation Torch, occupied French North Africa, and in response the Germa ...
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Clark University Alumni
Clark is an English language surname with historical links to England, Scotland, and Ireland, ultimately derived from the Latin ''clericus'' meaning "scribe", "secretary" or a scholar within a religious order, referring to someone who was educated. ''Clark'' evolved from "clerk". The first records of the name are found in 12th-century England. The name has many variants. It is often used as the Anglicized variant of Irish O'Cleary, Cleary. ''Clark'' is the twenty-seventh most common surname in the United Kingdom, including placing fourteenth in Scotland. Clark is also an occasional given name, as in the case of Clark Gable. According to the 1990 United States census, ''Clark'' was the twenty-first most frequently encountered surname, accounting for 0.23% of the population. According to the 2010 United States Census, ''Clark'' was the thirtieth most frequent surname, with a count of 562,679.United States Census Bureau (October 8, 2021) Retrieved on 2025-02-11 Disambiguation pag ...
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Brown University Alumni
Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used to project colors onto television screens and computer monitors, brown combines red and green. The color brown is seen widely in nature, wood, soil, human hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. Brown is the color of dark wood or rich soil. In the RYB color model, brown is made by mixing the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. According to public opinion surveys in Europe and the United States, brown is the least favorite color of the public; it is often associated with fecal matter, plainness, the rustic, although it does also have positive associations, including baking, warmth, wildlife, the autumn and music. Etymology The term is from Old English , in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color. The first r ...
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1887 Births
Events January * January 11 – Louis Pasteur's anti- rabies treatment is defended in the Académie Nationale de Médecine, by Dr. Joseph Grancher. * January 20 ** The United States Senate allows the United States Navy to lease Pearl Harbor as a naval base. ** British emigrant ship '' Kapunda'' sinks after a collision off the coast of Brazil, killing 303 with only 16 survivors. * January 21 ** The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is formed in the United States. ** Brisbane receives a one-day rainfall of (a record for any Australian capital city). * January 24 – Battle of Dogali: Abyssinian troops defeat the Italians. * January 28 ** In a snowstorm at Fort Keogh, Montana, the largest snowflakes on record are reported. They are wide and thick. ** Construction work begins on the foundations of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. February * February 2 – The first Groundhog Day is observed in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. * February 4 – The Interstate Comme ...
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Order Of The White Lion
The Order of the White Lion () is the highest order of the Czech Republic. It continues a Czechoslovak order of the same name created in 1922 as an award for foreigners (Czechoslovakia having no civilian decoration for its citizens in the 1920s and 1930s). It was inspired by the Czech Nobility Cross created in 1814 by the Emperor and King Francis II and awarded to 37 Bohemian noblemen. 1922–1961 The order was created as an award for merit by Czechoslovakia for foreign citizens. The Order was established in five classes and two divisions, civil (with two crossed palms above the badge) and military (with two crossed swords above the badge). Medals were made of gold and silver. The numbers of recipients was originally limited, with the limits changing during later years. The Statutes of the order were amended in 1924, 1930, and 1936. The badge of the Order was a five-sided red enameled star, the ends adorned with small balls, and with leaflets between the arms. In middle o ...
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Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet Union, it dissolved in 1991. During its existence, it was the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country by area, extending across Time in Russia, eleven time zones and sharing Geography of the Soviet Union#Borders and neighbors, borders with twelve countries, and the List of countries and dependencies by population, third-most populous country. An overall successor to the Russian Empire, it was nominally organized as a federal union of Republics of the Soviet Union, national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR. In practice, Government of the Soviet Union, its government and Economy of the Soviet Union, economy were Soviet-type economic planning, highly centralized. As a one-party state go ...
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Noel Field
Noel Haviland Field (23 January 1904 – 12 September 1970) was an American diplomat who was accused of being a spy for the NKVD. His name was used as a prosecuting rationale during the 1949 Rajk show trial in Hungary, as well as the 1952 Slánský show trial in Czechoslovakia. Much controversy surrounds the Field story. In 2015, the historian David Talbot reignited claims that Field was set up by Allen Dulles in order to create paranoia designed to undermine the Soviet Union. During World War II, Field worked in France and Switzerland to support Jewish and anti-fascist refugees. During this time, he also had contact with the U.S. intelligence service OSS. Arrested in Prague in 1949 by the Czechoslovak secret police, handed over to the Hungarian secret police and subsequently imprisoned in Hungary, he served as the pretext for show trials of Communist functionaries in Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary, where it was claimed that he had served as their American spymaste ...
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McCarthyism
McCarthyism is a political practice defined by the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a Fear mongering, campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s, heavily associated with the Second Red Scare, also known as the McCarthy Era. After the mid-1950s, U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false. The Warren Court, U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more acc ...
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War Refugee Board
The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency to aid civilian victims of the Axis powers. The Board was, in the words of historian Rebecca Erbelding, "the only time in American history that the US government founded a non-military government agency to save the lives of civilians being murdered by a wartime enemy." There was increasing and persistent significant publicity and pressure on the Roosevelt administration to help the abandoned Jews of Europe. The campaign was led by the Bergson Group led by Hillel Kook (aka Peter Bergson). The activist group had significant support by many leading senators and congressmen mostly from states without significant Jewish voters, from Eleanor Roosevelt, famous Hollywood and Broadway personalities and other prominent citizens. President Roosevelt acted after considerable additional pressure from his friend, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. and his team at the Tr ...
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Marseilles
Marseille (; ; see below) is a city in southern France, the prefecture of the department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the Provence region, it is located on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, near the mouth of the Rhône river. Marseille is the second-most populous city proper in France, after Paris, with 873,076 inhabitants in 2021. Marseille with its suburbs and exurbs create the Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis, with a population of 1,911,311 at the 2021 census. Founded by Greek settlers from Phocaea, Marseille is the oldest city in France, as well as one of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited settlements. It was known to the ancient Greeks as '' Massalia'' and to Romans as ''Massilia''. Marseille has been a trading port since ancient times. In particular, it experienced a considerable commercial boom during the colonial period and especially during the 19th century, becoming a prosperous industrial and tradi ...
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Varian Fry
Varian Mackey Fry (October 15, 1907 – September 13, 1967) was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France from August 1940 to September 1941 that helped 2,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees, mostly artists and intellectuals, escape from persecution by Nazi Germany during World War II. Fry spent "thirteen months directing a bold, high-risk, and much celebrated refugee-smuggling operation in the south of France that included an all-star cast of ''Kulturträger'' ulture carriers among them artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, and writer André Breton and philosopher Hannah Arendt." His activities, illegal under the laws of Vichy France, contrary to the policies of the United States government, and opposed by many of the other refugee relief organizations in France resulted in his expulsion and the severing of ties with him by his organization, the Emergency Rescue Committee. He was the first of five Americans to be recognized as "Righteous Among the Nati ...
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