American OSE Committee (RG 494)

OEuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) was a worldwide organization for child care, health and hygiene among Jews, with headquarters in Paris. Founded in 1912 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The name OSE was originally an acronym for Obshchestvo Zdravokhraneniya Yevreyev (Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews). The OSE maintained branches in Russia, Poland, Rumania and Central and Western Europe. The Polish name was TOZ (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia - Society for the Protection of Health) and the French name Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Society for the Aid of Children). By 1939 OSE maintained hundreds of institutions which included hospitals, nurseries, feeding centers for school children, summer camps and sanatoriums. The institutions of OSE in Europe were destroyed during World War II. After the war, OSE shifted its activities to North America, Latin America, Africa and Israel. Its work includes control of epidemic diseases, dissemination of public health information, medical research and improvement of general health conditions. Records of the American OSE Committee in New York, including correspondence, reports, subject files, materials regarding immigration, OSE Executive Committee and Board of Directors meeting minutes, financial documents, records related to shipments of medical supplies for Jews in the ghettos and in the German-occupied countries during World War II, rehabilitation, emigration, and the care of Jewish refugees and orphans in the post-war period, lists of survivors of World War II, lists of Jewish doctors, lists of Polish physicists, scientists who were murdered, lists of Jewish Polish physicians in the USSR, April 1943, newspaper clippings, printed materials, and individual questionnaires of children for emigration to America. Copyright Holder: Yivo Institute for Jewish Research