This chapter takes a look at the women who led the organization. Between the end of the Second World War and the end of Israel's first decade of statehood in 1958, Hadassah was headed by twelve of the thirty women who sat on the National Board. They can be divided into three groups according to their socioeconomic and cultural background. One group (the largest) comprised members of families that had emigrated to the United States from eastern Europe. These women had been raised and educated in America, most of them in New York. The second group, consisting of women from a German Jewish background, falls into two sub-groups: American-born women of German Jewish origin who were married to men of east European origin, and very well-to-do women who came to the United States from Germany on the eve of the Second World War. The third group consisted of women who were involved in volunteer work in Palestine and, later, Israel. The members of this last group had a totally different background from that of the US leadership, but their work in Palestine over a long period justifies their inclusion in this chapter's review.
British Policy in South-east Europe in the Second World War. By Elisabeth Barker. Studies in Russian and East European History. New York: Barnes & Noble, Harper & Row. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1976. viii, 320 pp. Maps. $27.50.
