THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY RARE BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS DIVISION ACCESSION SHEET Accession # *87 M 55 Location 8-j-3/***** Title Central and Eastern European Planning Board. Records. Approximate inclusive dates 1942-1945 Date of receipt 1945 Received from Feliks Gross, Gift. Volume on arrival. Number of boxes (after reboxing) 20 boxes. 9.25 linear ft. Condition Generally good. Some reports, letters, and publications are on crumbling brown paper. Restrictions Description The Board was founded in New York in January, 1942 by representatives of the exiled governments of occupied Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, and Yugoslavia following their attendance at the International Labor Conference held in New York in November, 1941. From 1942-1945 it conducted research and formulated plans for postwar reconstruction in the four countries, with the goal of forming a democratic central and eastern European federation. The countries financed the Board with their contributions, and were represented by government ministers: Jan Masaryk (alternating with Jaromir Necas), Czechoslovakia; Emanuel Tsouderos (replacing Aristides Dimitratos, Greece's original representative on the Board), Greece; Jan Stanczyk, Poland; and Sava N. Kosanovich, Yugoslavia. These representatives made up the General Steering Committee (chaired by Kosanovich), the Board's executive body. The Board also had committees on economics (with subcommittees on agriculture, finance and foreign trade, industry, and relief) and education. Feliks Gross was Secretary-General. Gross - lawyer, sociologist, political scientist, author of many books and articles, active in the labor movement in Poland, member of the Polish Socialist Party - was born in Poland in 1906, and came to the United States during the war. The Board published the monthly journal New Europe; a monthly newsletter, Survey of Central and Eastern Europe, which reported on wartime conditions in the occupied countries; a pamphlet series; and a series of irregularly issued Documents and Reports. It also participated in institutes, conferences, and other educational forums on the topic of postwar reconstruction in central and eastern Europe. Many of these were held at colleges and universities in the United States; Antioch College, Hofstra College, New York University, and the University of Wyoming are mentioned frequently. The withdrawal Yugoslavia and Greece from the Board in August and September of 1943, respectively; the severance of relations between the Czech and Polish governments; and changes in the political climate which caused Gross to remark: "...realities are against the ideas which were underlying the foundation of our organization," (Gross to M.A. de Capriles, Acting Chief, Foreign Agents Registration Section, War Division, Department of Justice, August 3, 1945) all contributed to the closing down of the Board in the Fall of 1945. Special Formats -Photographs -Maps -Audio Tapes -Films -Graphics -Artifacts -Machine-readable records -Other (list) Temporary catalog card added entries See attached. Central and Eastern European Planning Board Series I. Correspondence and Telegrams, 1942-1945. II. Committee Records, 1942-1943. III. Miscellaneous Administrative Records, 1942-1945. IV. Publications, 1942-1944. V. Reports and other Writings, ca. 1942-1945. VI. Photographs, Drawings, and Cartoons. The correspondence series forms the most complete segment of the collection. It is organized into three sections: chronological correspondence, alphabetical correspondence, and telegrams, but all of them date from the Board's founding in January, 1942 until its demise in the Fall of 1945, are with the same correspondents, and concern the same topics, making it necessary for the researcher to consult all three. Correspondence is very largely that of Secretary-General Feliks Gross; some belongs to General Steering Committee Chairman Sava N. Kosanovich, Research Associates Olgierd Langer and Dragan Plamenac, and other Board members and staff. It is largely in English, with some in Polish, and a few items in German, French, and possibly other languages. Miscellaneous reports, speeches, articles, invitations, clippings, press releases, and other printed and typescript documents can be found among the letters. Topics discussed include: the formation of the Board; arrangements for the educational forums in which the Board participated; New Europe and other Board publications; wartime conditions (including the situation of the Jews) in Czechoslovakia, Greece, Poland, and Yugoslavia; plans for postwar reconstruction and federation in the region; requests for information and publications from individuals and organizations, and the Board's requests for the same from them; routine office matters; and Gross' own speaking engagements, books, and articles. A small amount of correspondence (with the World Jewish Congress and other organizations and individuals) documents Gross' efforts to assist members of his family still in Europe. Correspondents include: officials of the four governments in New York, Washington D.C., London, and elsewhere (filed by country name in the alphabetical correspondence section), and a variety of individuals and organizations located largely in the United States, including: American Academy of Political and Social Science; American Friends Service Committee; Anti-Nazi League; Antioch College; Belgian Commission for the Study of War Problems (Commission Belge Pour l'Etude des Problemes d'Apres-Guerre, or CEPAG); Wladyslaw M. Besterman; Board of Economic Warfare, Washington D.C.; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Stephen Chaconas; Lewis Corey; Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace; Commission to Study the Organization of Peace; Confederation Internationale des Etudiants; Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi; Columbia University; Free World magazine; C.J. Friedrich; Varian Fry; Geneseo State Teachers College; Arthur Goldsmith; Hofstra College; Hoover Library of War, Revolution, and Peace; George B. de Huszar; Institute of Democracy; Institute of Jewish Affairs; Institute of World Economics; International Labor Office; Jozef P. Junosza; Journal of Central European Affairs; Kolin Publishers; Tadeusz Korsak; Jan B. Kozak; Leo Krzycki; Eugene M. Kulischer; Tadeusz Kusniarz; Olgierd Langer; Latin American Economic Institute; League of Nations; Irena Poplawska Leinveber; Philip Mosely; Eric Mann (representing the Fifth Avenue Forum); National Council of Women; National Resources Planning Board; Netherlands Study Group for Postwar Reconstruction; National Planning Association; New School for Social Research; New York Public Library; New York University; Office of Strategic Services; Office of War Information; Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences; Polish Telegraph Agency; Otakar Odlozilik; Rand School of Social Science; Joseph Roucek; Rutgers University; Russell Sage College; Reinhold Schairer; William Marston Seabury; Clarence Senior; various United Nations bodies (the United Nations Information Office, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, others); various United States government departments; United States Committee on Educational Reconstruction; University of Wyoming; Vassar College; World Jewish Congress; others. The Board's committee records are fragmentary. They include minutes of the General Steering Committee dating from the organizing meeting on January 7, 1942 until January 11, 1943, with some related agenda, budgets, and notes; minutes of coordinating meetings of the secretaries of the national groups (Secretary-General Gross and the editor of New Europe also attended), January-May, 1942. The Education Committee is represented by minutes of one meeting, -the preliminary meeting of July 15, 1942; correspondence of Education Committee Chairman Boris Furlan; miscellaneous reports, notes, lists, and clippings; minutes of a meeting of the United States Committee on Educational Reconstruction (a meeting of its Commission for Problems of Workers and Adult Education), July 15, 1943, that Gross attended; and minutes of a joint meeting of the Board and the U.S. Committee on Educational Reconstruction (the topics was textbooks for Europe), June 14, 1943. Also, minutes of the inaugural meeting of the Joint Economic Committees, May 28, 1942, with related addresses; Economic Committee correspondence, 1942-1943 (some is that of Committee Chairman Antonin Basch); sparse minutes and correspondence, ca. 1942-1943 of Economic Committee subcommittees on agriculture, industry, and finance and foreign trade. Board administrative records, also fragmentary, consist of: by-laws; budgets; financial statements; bills; receipts (including receipts, with related correspondence, for the contributions made by the four countries to the Board); tax forms; contracts; leases; correspondence. These related to financial matters; registration of Board members with the United States Government as foreign agents; liquidation of the Board; and routine office operations. Also included here are Secretary-General's reports, issued at various intervals, 1942-1943; Board declarations; a Polish-Czechoslovak declaration, issued from London, January 24, 1942, declaring the two countries' intention to form a federation after the war, and a Greek-Yugoslav agreement, January 15, 1942, in which those two countries agreed to form a Balkan Union. Board publications included in the collection consist of: pamphlets containing essays by Louis Adamic, Vojta Benes, Boris Furlan, Feliks Gross, Oskar Halecki, J.B. Kozak, and Otakar Odlozilik, on reconstruction in the region; The Survey of Central and Eastern Europe, May, 1942 - August, 1943, complete for that period; and Documents and Reports, issues 1-7, 1942-1943. Also included are a few publications produced by others, notably a series of newsletters, In Re: Two-Way Passage, 1942-1943, and War and Post-War, 1943-1944, produced by Louis Adamic. Five boxes contain a variety of reports, policy statements, typescripts and photocopies of articles from the Polish underground press and from Yiddish and other publications, and other writings. Approximately two thirds of these are in Polish, the rest are in English, with a small amount in German, French, and possibly other languages. A small number of photographs, clippings, and letters are included. Some of this material was produced by or for the Board, some was issued by the Polish government in London, some writings are by Feliks Gross, and the rest was produced by a variety of attributed and unattributed individuals and organizations both in the United States and abroad. They appear to relate mainly to wartime conditions and postwar reconstruction in the four countries. Also included are photographs of maps of Poland showing locations of concentration camps, and of the Curzon Line as proposed by Lord Curzon; two unidentified photographs showing soldiers and civilians; photographs of illustrations used in the O.W.I. pamphlet "Tale of a City" showing a city under Nazi occupation (some illustrations identify the city as Warsaw); photo-collages of war scenes made by T. Zarnower; reproductions of drawings of war scenes by John Goth, 1944; and caricatures of Churchill, Hitler, Quisling, Roosevelt, Stalin, and other political figures by A.H., 1942. CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN PLANNING BOARD Container List Box I. Correspondence and Telegrams, 1942-1945 a. Chronological 1 March, 1942 - December, 1943 2 January, 1944 - September, 1945 b. Alphabetical 3 A - C 4 D - K 5 L - N 6 O - S 7 T - Z 8 c. Telegrams II. Committee Records, 1942-1943 8 General Steering Committee, 1942-1943 9 Economic Committee, 1942-1943 Education Committee, 1942-1943 Coordinating Meetings of the Secretaries, 1942 10 - 12 III. Miscellaneous Administrative Records, 1942-1945 13 IV. Publications, 1942-1944 13 - 17 V. Reports and Other Writings, ca.1942-1945 18 VI. Photographs, Drawings, and Cartoons 19 Clipping Books 20 Clippings and printed ephemera Papers of the Central and Eastern European Planning Board. Box Listing Box No. General Correspondence 1 1942-43 2 1944-45 Correspondence with Organizations and Prominent People (1942-45) 3 A-Co 4 Cz-G 5 I-N 6 O-P 7 R-Z 8 Telegrams (1942-45) 9 Policy Memoranda and Statements Includes reports of the Secretary General and the Board's plans for post-war reconstruction. 10 Meeting Minutes (1942-45) Steering Committee, economic subcommittee, and education subcommittee. Sponsored Research 11 Papers defining the economic and economic and social problems facing the post-war world. 12 Poland's economic problems. 13 Poland's social problems. 14 Polish politics. Financial Papers 15 Budgets and contributions 16 Bills paid (1942-45) 17 Papers re Registation as Foreign Agents