Comité de Coordination pour l’Assistance dans les Camps
- Comité de Nimes
- CCAC
Dates of Existence
Founded in 1940-11
History
After 1940-10, the camp activities of the major Jewish welfare agencies were coordinated within the Commission Centrale des Organizations Juives d’Assistance under the leadership of Grand Rabbi René Hirschler. A month later, the Jewish central commission met with various non-Jewish agencies working in the camps, such as Comité inter-mouvements aupres des evacues (CIMADE), the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA), the Quakers, various national branches of the Red Cross, the Secours Suisse, the Service social d’aide aux emigrants (SSAE), the Unitarian Service Committee, the Rockefeller Foundation, and others, as well as with representatives of Pierre Cardinal Gerlier, the archbishop of Lyon, to form the Comité de Coordination pour l’Assistance dans les Camps. The American YMCA representative, Donald Lowrie, became the committee’s president. Known familiarly as the Comité de Nimes, from the city where meetings were held, the new coordinating agency was able to channel resources into the camps more efficiently. With its international connections and consequent ability to embarrass France abroad, the committee was also able to pressure Vichy for concessions. It almost immediately obtained permission to establish small teams of medical and social workers in every camp, unhindered by personal and bureaucratic vagaries at the site. It later won other concessions, such as the right of internees to receive mail and packages, develop schools and workshops, meet with Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish chaplains, and protest against abusive personnel. In the long run, perhaps the most significant work of the committee involved the establishment of Centres d’Accueil, the supervised residences outside the camps where internees could live with greater comfort and dignity.
Places
Founded in France, Nimes
Sources
The Holocaust, the French and the Jews / S. Zuccotti. - New York, 1993. - p. 72, 73