Joseph Charlap Hyman (1899 – February 10, 1949) was an American attorney, social worker, and philanthropist. He was born in New York, to Abraham Chaim Charlap, a member of the Sephardic rabbinical dynasty of

Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph Gedaliah ibn Yahya ben Joseph (Hebrew: גדליה אבן יחיא בן יוסף; – 1587) was a 16th-century Italian Talmudist and Biblical chronologist chiefly known for his Biblical Chronology "Shalshelet HaḲabbalah". Biography Born in I ...

and a noted author and publisher of

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

texts and their English translations. Through his work with Herbert H. Lehman, he became involved with the

Joint Distribution Committee American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also known as Joint or JDC, is a Jewish relief organization based in New York City. Since 1914 the organisation has supported Jewish people living in Israel and throughout the world. The organization i ...

, the largest and most encompassing of the organizations devoted to the Jewish refugee and rescue crisis during and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, and was its vice chairman under

Felix M. Warburg Felix Moritz Warburg (January 14, 1871October 20, 1937) was a German-born American banker. He was a member of the Warburg banking family of Hamburg, Germany. Early life Warburg was born in Hamburg, Germany, on January 14, 1871. He was a grandso ...

from 1922 until his retirement in 1947. Under his leadership, the Joint Distribution Committee helped 81,000 Jews to emigrate out of

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

-occupied Europe to safety, smuggled aid to Jewish prisoners in labor camps, and provided financing for the Polish Jewish underground in preparations for the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto revolt.http://archives.jdc.org/assets/documents/thevoyageofthest-louis.pdf He was a key figure in keeping American Jewish leaders informed about the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

and met with Secretary of the Treasury

Henry Morgenthau Jr. Henry Morgenthau Jr. (; May 11, 1891February 6, 1967) was the United States Secretary of the Treasury during most of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He played a major role in designing and financing the New Deal. After 1937, while ...

and Secretary of State Cordell Hull to request visas for the 907 refugees aboard the ''

MS St. Louis MS ''St. Louis'' was a diesel-powered passenger ship properly referred to with the prefix MS or MV, built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen for ''HAPAG'', better known in English as the Hamburg America Line. The ship was named after t ...

'' on June 1, 1939, which was unsuccessful. The events of the ''MS St. Louis'' tragedy are recorded in the 1976 film ''

Voyage of the Damned ''Voyage of the Damned'' is a 1976 drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with an all-star cast featuring Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, and Malcolm McDowell. The story was inspired by actual events co ...

''. Apart from his activities within the JDC, he served as adviser to the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

High Commissioner on Refugees, James G. McDonald, and was assistant to Felix M. Warburg as chairman of the administrative committee of the

Jewish Agency for Palestine The Jewish Agency for Israel ( he, הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל, translit=HaSochnut HaYehudit L'Eretz Yisra'el) formerly known as The Jewish Agency for Palestine, is the largest Jewish non-profit organization in the world. ...

. His son is renowned pianist Richard "Dick" Hyman.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hyman, Joseph C. 1899 births 1949 deaths The Holocaust and the United States 20th-century American lawyers