Howard Wriggins™ - About The Book

(Photo: Old lady behind barbed wire "Held in Gurs in Southern France, she was probably deported to an extermination camp in the summer of 1942, along with 60,000 other, mostly foreign, Jews." AFSC files)

(Photo "A salvage worker views the remains of a town in southern Italy, destroyed by Allied and German armies as they struggled up the spine of southern Italy. " AFSC files)

PICKING UP THE PIECES FROM PORTUGAL TO PALESTINE: QUAKER REFUGEE RELIEF IN WORLD WAR II
by Howard Wriggins

Fresh out of Dartmouth, as a conscientious objector, I went to war-torn Europe to help out in a variety of missions under the Quaker relief organization that would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. My job was to assist refugees and to rebuild bombed-out homes in the mountains of Italy and in Normandy. I got to know all kinds of people: stateless Europeans in prisons in Portugal; released and rearrested internees in Algeria; Yugoslavs on transport ships from Italy to Egypt; German prisoners of war in France, Palestinians jammed into the Gaza strip after the first Arab-Israeli war.

As a young man far from home, I batted out long letters on my ancient Underwood portable to keep track of the terrifying events I witnessed. I reviewed these letters five decades later when I retired from Columbia University, where I had been the Bryce Professor of the History of International Relations. In them, I discovered a world where in the midst of war there was an idealism hard to find in today’s market-driven world.

I have tried to capture what I learned in Portugal and around the Mediterranean during World War II about the side effects of war and the resilience of the human spirit. I saw tragedy, as families were broken up and refugees who had made it as far as Portugal were not able to escape to freedom. I made mistakes, like the time I put off a relief worker who wished to consult with me at the end of a long day. She killed herself that night.I managed a relief program in Portugal for stateless of many former nationalities. In Algeria, Spanish refugees without work permits needed help; in Italy I tried to stir the Vatican to action, and I organized funding for the stateless unrepresented. In France, I worked with the Secours Quaker, a group of dedicated Europeans, helping to mend a society torn by a divisive occupation.
Sometimes my work added up to nothing, as it did when I sought quota numbers for visas that were not granted in time for stateless Europeans stuck in Portugal. These experiences grounded my studies of politics at Yale, where I received my doctorate.

In subsequent years, whether on the seventh floor of the State Department, or teaching policy and area studies in New York, I never forgot the devastation I saw in the cities of Normandy or the mountains of Italy. Nor the arbitrariness or accidents that had such horrendous personal consequences for those caught up in the hurricane of those eventful years. Because the information in this book is so completely documented, either by my letters or the archives of the AFSC, my book has a scholarly as well as storytelling appeal.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT
PICKING UP THE PIECES FROM PORTUGAL TO PALESTINE
QUAKER REFUGEE RELIEF IN WORLD WAR II
a memoir by Howard Wriggins
Bryce Professor of International Relations, Emeritus
Columbia University
(University Press of America, Inc. 239 pages. $48.60

(Photo: "In 1948, thousands of impoverished Palestinian Arabs fled warfare and poured into Gaza. Many families had to share one hydrant."AFSC files)

In 1947, AFSC received the Nobel Peace Prize for its service during World War 11.Many Quakers took this event as vindication for their long struggle to demonstrate that the way of love was a better way to solve human problems than the resort to armed struggle. Howard Wriggins, however, came to a different conclusion during his long years of service. A graduate of Germantown Friends School and an attender of Quaker meeting, he applied for and received conscientious objector status in 1941 and began training for overseas service at Pendle Hill While working with an AFSC team in Lisbon, however, Howardbegan to feel that armed intervention was the only option to stop Hitler. Throughout the war, he was deeply committed to the work Quakers were doing, but no longer considered himself a pacifist. At the end of the war he received a PhD from Yale in International Politics, and had a distinguished career teaching, and working for the U.S. State Department, including a stint as Ambassador to Sri Lanka. Howard Wriggins continues to bring his skills as a teacher to the daunting task of discussing all the nongovernmental organizations involved in refugee relief, as well as placing AFSC work in context. One can imagine this book being used in a text in a course on international relief work. Clearly written and well-illustrated with many anecdotes, it can also be read by the general reader as an aspect of a story of "the greatest generation" never told before. Howard Wriggins has done a splendid job

Margaret Bacon, Friends Journal

Wriggins’ insider perspective on the decision making processes he was involved in,both in large and smaller decisions, are invaluable and give student insights that they wouldn’t get from academic journal or text books. And the personal stories are compelling in ways that more formal articles anecdotes and texts are not. They will help students of today gain some understanding of the complexities of international relations, the differences between cultures and the horrors of war.

Rebecca Miles, Florida State University

When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it was easy for Americans to pick up their flags and support the effort to remove a hated tyrant, because, as a country, we had been protected from the horrors of war for two generations. It had become acceptable for everyone, even politicians, to skirt military service.
Howard Wriggins, a respected diplomat and professor at Columbia University, not only explains how awful war is, he also explains how necessary it sometimes may be. While Hitler and Franco were wiping out lives by the millions, Wriggins was saving lives, one by one, working with the American Friends Service Committee. But this is no holier-than-thou testimonial.Instead, Wriggins tells of going to Europe as a conscientious objector but emerging from the World War II experience understanding that not all problems can be solved without force. He went on to teach new generations to deal with the inevitable red tape and annoying politics of bureaucracy in order to solve the problems that only huge organizations can handle effectively. He describes the turf battles between the governments, the religious groups, the military and the NGOs in a way that puts some of today’s problems in perspective.

David Sandberg, Amazon.com

Wriggins’ journey from pacifism to relief service and humanitarian activism provides a close-up view of the barbarism of world war and one man’s struggle to respond with compassion. This book should be required reading for all young, energetic idealists contemplating NGO relief work. They will find that in the face of the arbitrary brutalities of war, redemption is possible when the pieces are picked up by people and institutions of good will like those with whom Wriggins worked in the AFSC.”

Joel Rosenthal, President of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Relations, New York

“’Picking up the Pieces from Portugal to Palestine’ is an engrossing story, but it also provides lessons to all those working to provide international relief and refugee assistance, whether with the United Nations, in NGOs, church missions or government humanitarian organizations.”

Peter J. Davies, President and CEO, INTERACTION (ret’d), New York

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