Joseph Charlap Hyman (1899 – February 10, 1949) was an American attorney, social worker, and philanthropist. He was born in New York, to Abraham Chaim Charlap, a member of the

Sephardic Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...

rabbinical dynasty of

Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph (; – 1587) was a 16th-century Italian Talmudist of the prominent Yahya family chiefly known for his chronology of the Bible and Jewish history up to his own time, ''The Chain of Oral Tradition'' (). Biography Bor ...

and a noted author and publisher of

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texts and their English translations. Through his work with Herbert H. Lehman, he became involved with the

Joint Distribution Committee Advert Where and how does this article resemble an advert and how should it be improved? See: Wikipedia:Spam (you might trthe Teahouseif you have questions). American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as Joint or JDC, is a Jewish ...

, the largest and most encompassing of the organizations devoted to the Jewish refugee and rescue crisis during and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, and was its vice chairman under Felix M. Warburg from 1922 until his retirement in 1947. Under his leadership, the Joint Distribution Committee helped 81,000 Jews to emigrate out of

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-occupied Europe to safety, smuggled aid to Jewish prisoners in labor camps, and provided financing for the Polish Jewish underground in preparations for the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto revolt.http://archives.jdc.org/assets/documents/thevoyageofthest-louis.pdf He was a key figure in keeping American Jewish leaders informed about the

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and met with Secretary of the Treasury

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and Secretary of State

Cordell Hull Cordell Hull (October 2, 1871July 23, 1955) was an American politician from Tennessee and the longest-serving U.S. Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years (1933–1944) in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevel ...

to request visas for the 907 refugees aboard the '' MS St. Louis'' on June 1, 1939, which was unsuccessful. The events of the ''MS St. Louis'' tragedy are recorded in the 1976 film ''

Voyage of the Damned ''Voyage of the Damned'' is a 1976 drama (film and television), drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with an Ensemble cast, all-star cast featuring Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, Lynne Frederick and Malco ...

''. Apart from his activities within the JDC, he served as adviser to the

League of Nations The League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920), Paris Peace ...

High Commissioner on Refugees, James G. McDonald, and was assistant to Felix M. Warburg as chairman of the administrative committee of the

Jewish Agency for Palestine The Jewish Agency for Israel (), formerly known as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jews, Jewish non-profit organization in the world. It was established in 1929 as the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). ...

. His son is renowned pianist Richard "Dick" Hyman.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyman, Joseph C. 1899 births 1949 deaths The Holocaust and the United States 20th-century American lawyers