OSE Photograph Collection

OSE was founded on August 7, 1912 in St. Petersburg, Russia as Obschestvo zdravookhraneniia evreev, OZE (Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jews) and was a worldwide organization dedicated to promoting health and hygiene among Jews, particularly children. OSE maintained branches in Russia, Rumania, central and western Europe, and Poland. OSE aimed to provide accessible, free health care for all Jews through its network of medical, sanitary and preventative services. The OSE branches also sought to address any health conditions and hereditary illnesses that specifically affected Jews, giving proper consideration to religious and ethnic traditions.

OSE maintained hundreds of institutions, which included hospitals, nurseries, centers providing food and milk for children, summer camps for children from low-income families, kindergartens, outpatient clinics and observation centers, and sanatoriums. OSE also provided maternity and early childhood consultations to mothers and distributed free medication and vaccinations to the needy at medical dispensaries. A special committee supervised physical education at Jewish schools and set up outdoor playgrounds. OSE staff delivered lectures and printed brochures in Yiddish on hygiene and sanitation, as well as advice on preventing and treating childhood illnesses, skin ailments, and infectious diseases, including trachoma, favus, cholera, and tuberculosis.

During World War I, OSE shifted its work toward providing emergency medical and nutritional care to Jewish refugees and displaced persons, particularly in areas near to the front lines. OSE ceased operations in the Soviet Union in 1921 and many of its programs were taken over by the state government. Also in 1921, OSE was established in Lithuania and became a national organization in Poland, where it was known as TOZ (Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Źidowskiej (Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Populace), both funded in large part by the Joint Distribution Committee. TOZ continued its work in several Polish ghettos until around 1942. In 1922, OSE established branches in Rumania and Latvia and formed a medical committee in London to support OSE activities in Eastern Europe. The Berlin OSE Committee was also formed in 1922 by immigrants from Russia, largely in response to famines in the lower Volga regions and southern Ukraine. Berlin OSE, with help from major international Jewish organizations and the Red Cross, was able to send food, medical equipment and medication, and later medical personnel to Soviet Russia, activities which lasted until the late 1930s. At a December 1922 conference in Berlin, representatives from Poland, Lithuania, Berlin, and London elected a central bureau composed of the Berlin OSE Committee members plus one representative from each local OSE organization. At the OSE Congress in August 1923, the World Union of OSE Societies (World OSE) was established, with Albert Einstein as the honorary president.

In 1933, with the rise of the Nazis, the World OSE Union relocated from Berlin to Paris where the acronym came to stand for Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (Society for the Aid of Children). World OSE headquarters moved to New York City from 1940-1945. In early 1934, OSE France was formed and immediately was faced with the question of the substantial stream of refugees who had escaped from Germany and Eastern Europe. A network of orphanages was set up all throughout France. During the wartime occupation of France, OSE had to officially liquidate their orphanages, although in reality they merely went underground. OSE members placed Jewish children with foster families, hid them in chateaus and smuggled hundreds out of France to neutral Switzerland. OSE’s central committee was also able to help Jews in occupied countries through a small branch in Geneva and via the International Red Cross, setting up orphanages to provide food and medical care.

After the end of World War II, during which the institutions of OSE in Europe were mainly destroyed, representatives of the World OSE Union traveled to Eastern Europe to help Holocaust survivors, setting up branches in Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The World OSE Union shifted its postwar activities to North America, Latin America, North Africa, and Israel. It is currently based in Paris and continues its goals of providing medical care, safeguarding the health of mothers, infants and children, fighting disease, and promoting hygiene, sanitation and health education.