Helping the Victims of War 1870-1939

Relief Fund, 1870

Although Quakers organised relief work on a number of occasions during the nineteenth century - for instance, in famine stricken Ireland in the 1840s and in coastal towns of Finland after they were devastated by British naval bombardment during the Crimean War - it was in 1870 that the first official Friends War Victims Relief Committee (FWVRC) was set up. Through the agency of some forty Quaker commissioners, the FWVRC undertook relief work among the civilian population of towns and villages devastated in the Franco-Prussian War. This was the first time the Quaker star - the badge of the Quaker relief worker - was used, and the policy of no discrimination between the "sides" in war was formally adopted. War Victims Relief Committees were revived in 1876 for Eastern Europe and in 1912 for the Balkans. An official committee was also active in South Africa after 1900, particularly among Boers in internment camps.

After the outbreak of war in 1914 the War Victims Relief Committee was revived to undertake overseas work of relief and later post-war reconstruction. Much medical work was done in France, including the founding of a maternity hospital at Chalons-sur-Marne. The work expanded, especially after America joined in the war in 1917, and the American Friends Service Council became involved. Relief work extended to Poland, Russia, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany, Austria, and Poland.

Activity between the two world wars included that of the Germany Emergency Committee (later Friends Committee for Refugees and Aliens), which functioned from 1933 to 1948; and relief operations in Spain, which also involved running refugee camps in southern France.

In the aftermath of the First World War, large populations in continental Europe were suffering severe deprivation. British and American Quakers undertook food relief in both Germany and Austria, with particular concern for the children.  This relief, known as "Quäkerspeisung" (Quaker feeding) made a lasting impression on the people.                        

I heard the term Quaker for the first time in 1935 as an elementary school boy when we received during the 10 o'clock break a bun and cocoa, still called "Quäkerspeisung". It had been introduced by a Friends relief program for German school children in 1920, but was since many years paid for from the school budget.
Dieter Hartwich, Council Member of Quaker Council for European Affairs
Around Europe, No. 262 May 2004

Quäkerspeisung, 1920

The Second World War and aftermath