Records of the American Jewish Committee Paris Office (FAD-41) Files

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) was founded in New York in 1906 to defend Jewish civil and religious rights throughout the world. Among the original founders of the AJC were Louis Marshall, Judge Mayer Sulzberger, Jacob Schiff , and Cyrus Adler. At the outset, the AJC consisted of a select group who interceded on behalf of Jews privately and behind-the-scenes, in the traditional style of shtadlanut personal diplomacy. Early AJC efforts included lobbying for a liberal American immigration policy and against the literacy test requirement for immigrants. It campaigned against violations of rights of Jews in Tsarist Russia and worked to secure minority rights for Jews in post-WWI Europe.

In the 1930s the AJC began to widen its membership, and by the 1940s its structure and approach had undergone a fundamental change. The private diplomacy policies gave way to more broad and outspoken public relations and educational programs, including anti-German boycott campaigns and scholarly studies, surveys, and publications on anti-Semitism, Nazi influences in the US, civil and religious rights, and inter-religious and intercultural relations.

During the rise of Nazism and Fascism and the years of World War Two, the AJC intervened before the US and other Allied governments on behalf of the persecuted Jews of Europe. It campaigned against domestic indifference and pro-Nazi sympathies, and encouraged neutral states‘ representatives to allow Jewish immigration and to create safe heavens for Jewish refugees.

After the war, the Committee continued its lobbying activities, public relations and educational programs, monitoring anti-Semitism, racism and bigotry, and promoting intergroup cooperation, cultural diversity, and intercultural education. The AJC supported legislation addressing racial and religious discrimination in employment, education, and housing. The Committee campaigned on behalf of Soviet Jews, as well as for Jewish groups in Syria, Iran and Ethiopia. The AJC also drew attention to the plight of persecuted ethnic and religious groups throughout the world.

The AJC founded the monthly magazine Commentary in 1945 and has co-sponsored the annual publication of the American Jewish Year Book since 1908.

The AJC national headquarters are in New York and it has regional offices throughout the United States, an Israeli office in Jerusalem, and a number of other international offices.

The Paris Office, officially known as the European Office of the American Jewish Committee, was established in 1947 as a regional office to provide permanent oversight of the network of AJC “correspondents” throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. The original tasks of the Office were to collect information, study conditions and report on the situation of Jews and Jewish communities, anti-Semitism, Nazi war criminals, neo-Nazism, treatment of Jews by Communist regimes and other matters of AJC concern. Subsequently the Paris Office served as the central representative of the AJC in the Eastern Hemisphere. Among its functions were to propose ways to improve the state and conditions of Jewish populations in Europe and North Africa, to inform central AJC bodies and other AJC offices on the developments in its region, to intervene with governments and other authorities on behalf of Jews, and to further the concepts of democracy, civil and human rights. The Paris Office also reported to the headquarters in New York on European reactions to American developments with regard to religious and racial discrimination.

Over the years the AJC Paris Office was involved in major programs and projects of the AJC that included, among others, relief for Jewish refugees and DPs, aid for Jewish emigration from Muslim lands, monitoring of resurgence of pro-Nazi movements in Europe and of anti-Semitic tendencies and developments in the Soviet bloc countries, work with German and Austrian authorities on denazification and strengthening democratic teachings and institutions, promotion of Jewish-Christian dialogue, and helping to fashion the post-war international legislation on genocide and human rights through cooperation with various UN bodies.

The AJC Paris Office published a periodical in French called Evidences, devoted to Jewish-related issues in the European and Middle Eastern regions, developing Christian-Jewish understanding, and demonstrating the harmful impact of racial and religious discrimination.

The Office personnel supervised a network of local country representatives-correspondents and included a director, a public relations assistant, two secretaries and an administrative clerk.

The head of the Paris Office during the period covered by the collection was Zachariah Shuster (1903-1986), a native of Poland who came in 1927 to the US and started to work for the AJC during World War Two. In 1948 he became the head of the Paris Office, directing programs to rebuild and secure Jewish communities in Europe and North Africa, addressing issues of restitution of Jewish property and indemnification of Jewish victims of Nazism, monitoring anti-Jewish activities, and providing recommendations for the AJC policies in the region. Shuster was directly involved in Jewish-Catholic dialogue and represented the AJC at the Second Vatican Council, convened by Pope John XXIII in 1962. Zachariah Shuster remained the committee's chief representative in Europe until 1974, after which he became a consultant. He returned to the United States in 1981 and continued to advise the committee on European affairs and relations with the Vatican and the World Council of Churches.

Another prominent AJC representative at the Paris Office was Abraham Karlikow (1920-2013), a legal counsel, public relations assistant and later director of the Paris Office, who was involved in relief work for Jewish refugees and displaced persons from the 1940s through the 1970s, and facilitated Jewish restitution and indemnification. In 1979 he moved back to New York to serve as Director of the AJC Foreign Affairs Department. Karlikow was an AJC representative to the International League for Human Rights and the United Nations Economic and Social Council. After retirement he worked as a public school teacher in Bronx.

The Paris Office has played an important role in shaping AJC and American policies related to Jewish relief and educational work in Europe and North Africa, strengthening Jewish communal organizations there, attracting attention to the resurgence of pro-Nazi sentiments in Western and Central Europe and to anti-Semitic campaigns in the Soviet bloc countries.