Earl G. Harrison papers
Extent and Medium
folders
5
Creator(s)
- Earl G. Harrison
Biographical History
Earl G. Harrison (1899-1955) was a lawyer who served in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration as Director of Alien Registration within the Justice Department, United States Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, and US representative on the Intergovernmental Commission on Refugees. At President Harry Truman’s request, he toured and inspected displaced persons camps in the American zone of Europe in the summer of 1945. His report, which became known as the Harrison Report, publicized the poor conditions of the camps, recommended that 100,000 Jewish displaced persons be permitted to resettle in Palestine, and led to the separation of Jewish displaced persons from anti-Semitic populations, an improvement in their housing and rations, and the appointment of an adviser on Jewish affairs to the U.S. Army.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Earl G. Harrison, Jr., J. Barton Harrison, and Paul Harrison
Funding Note: The digitization of this collection was made possible by the Crown Family.
Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
Funding Note: The accessibility of this collection was made possible by the generous donors to our crowdfunded Save Their Stories campaign.
Earl G. Harrison, Jr., J. Barton Harrison, and Paul Harrison donated the Earl G. Harrison papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1994.
Scope and Content
The Earl G. Harrison papers consist of the journal Harrison kept during his summer 1945 tour of displaced persons camps, a typescript of his article "The Last Hundred Thousand" about the camps he visited and people he met, excerpts from addresses about displaced persons he delivered in the fall and winter of 1945, a broadcast transcript of a radio program from July 1946 featuring Harrison's support of Jewish migration to Palestine, and newspaper and magazine clippings about displaced persons and Harrison’s work.
System of Arrangement
The Earl G. Harrison papers are arranged as a single series: I. Earl G. Harrison papers, 1945-1946
People
- Harrison, Earl Grant, 1899-
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Europe.
- Refugee camps--Europe.
- Holocaust survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945--Refugees.
- Jewish refugees--Europe--History--20th century.
Genre
- Diaries.
- Document