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Henry Garfield Alsberg (September 21, 1881 – November 1, 1970) was an American journalist and writer who served as the founding director of the Federal Writers' Project. A lawyer by training, he was a foreign correspondent during the Russian Revolution, secretary to the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and an influential volunteer for refugee aid efforts. Alsberg was a producer at the Provincetown Playhouse. He spent years traveling through war-torn Europe on behalf of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. After publishing several magazines for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, he was appointed to head the Federal Writers' Project. Fired from the project in 1939 shortly after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he worked for a short time for the Office of War Information, before joining Hastings House Publishers as an editor. Early life and education Alsberg was born September 21, 1881, in Manhattan to Meinhard and Bertha Alsberg. Meinhard was born in Arolsen, Germany and immigrated as a child with his family to the United States in 1865. He was naturalized in 1876. He married Bertha (born in New York City) and had four children with her, of whom Henry was the youngest. Alsberg's parents were secular Jews, his mother being indifferent to religion and his father described as "aggressive in his agnosticism". Alsberg had neither a bris nor a Bar Mitzvah. He attended a shul only once as a child, when his grandmother took him to Temple Emanu-El, which infuriated his father. Initially home-schooled, Alsberg was fluent in German and French, and spoke some Yiddish and Russian. For his secondary education, he attended Mount Morris Latin School. Alsberg suffered from lifelong digestive problems, possibly related to an incident in his teens when his appendix ruptured in the middle of the night. Alsberg waited till morning to tell his family rather than wake them up, and had emergency abdominal surgery. Alsberg, called Hank by friends and family, entered Columbia University at age 15 in 1896, the youngest member of the class of 1900, who called themselves the "Naughty-Naughtians". Alsberg was an editor of the literary magazine The Morningside, and also contributed poems and short stories. He belonged to the Société Française and the Philharmonic Society (cellist), and participated in baseball, wrestling, and fencing. After graduation, Alsberg enrolled in Columbia Law School, graduating in 1903. Alsberg played two seasons on both the college and varsity football teams as guard and tackle. After practicing law for three years, Alsberg entered Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Science for a year to study comparative literature. Journalism, theater, and international activity Early years in journalism Uninterested in finishing his graduate studies at Harvard or practicing law, Alsberg moved back to New York City to write. He sent an early play to Paul Kester, who recommended it to Bertha Galland. He sold a short story, "Soirée Kokimono", to The Forum in 1912; the story was selected for the following year's Forum Stories compilation. Abram Isaac Elkus, a friend of Alsberg's brother Carl and a strategist for Woodrow Wilson's presidential campaign, sent Alsberg to London to investigate claims that American-made goods were cheaper abroad than in the U.S. due to Republican-imposed tariffs. Alsberg wrote up the results of his investigation in an article published in the New York Sunday World. The Wilson campaign used it to buttress their platform's call to reduce tariffs. Alsberg began writing for the New York Evening Post in 1913, as well as its sister publication The Nation. His 1914 article for The Masses criticized the churches that turned away homeless during the brutal blizzard that hit New York on March 1. Alsberg went to London where he began working as a roving foreign correspondent for The Nation, New York World, and London's Daily Herald. In August 1916, Alsberg was appointed personal secretary and press attaché to Elkus, who had been appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire; they traveled on the Oscar II to Constantinople via Copenhagen. Alsberg took charge of the embassy's efforts to aid Armenians and Jews, which put him in contact with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). When the U.S. declared war on Germany in April 1917, Turkey broke off diplomatic relations and the American embassy officials left. On his return to the states, Alsberg met with Secretary of State Robert Lansing to brief him on conditions in Constantinople and offered a plan for separating the Ottoman Empire from the German Alliance, which Lansing passed on to Woodrow Wilson. The next day, former Ambassador Henry Morgenthau suggested a similar plan to Lansing. A mission to Turkey consisted of Morgenthau and Felix Frankfurter (then an assistant to the Secretary of War), with Alsberg advising them on conditions and issues. In 1917, Alsberg taught a course on the socialist-inspired cooperative movement at the Rand School of Social Science, while again writing for Evening Post and The Nation. In the Evening Post, Alsberg disputed the authenticity of the Sisson Documents, claiming that they were forgeries, which was later confirmed by historians. In Jan 1919, Alsberg was secretary of the Palestine Restoration Fund Campaign's National Finance Commission, and wrote for The Maccabaean, the official organ of the Zionist Organization of America. Later in 1919, Alsberg returned to Europe as a foreign correspondent for The Nation. He attended the Peace Conference in Paris as attaché to the Zionist delegation. While there, Alsberg reconnected with the JDC which needed volunteers to assess and provide relief to destitute Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. Work with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee While volunteering with the JDC, Alsberg's passport listed his occupation as "food relief" for the American Relief Administration. Alsberg described the period after the Russian Revolution and World War I as "the emergence of many minor nationalities, all imbued with grand imperialistic passions, fighting for their independence in a condition of economic wretchedness and moral degradation". New nations were formed after the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. He spent four years in various countries, including the "bandit-ridden Ukraine". His first stop was the new country of Czechoslovakia, where he set up programs in Prague to help refugees. Alsberg also continued his reporting for The Nation, the London Herald, and the New York World, bringing the anti-Semitism he was observing to international attention. Some of his articles were noticed by American authorities for their sympathy to Bolshevik, anarchist, and radical ideas, and he was observed for some time by Allied military intelligence. In April 1919, the JDC transferred him to Poland, though he went reluctantly, concerned about abandoning his .... Discover the Susan Rubenstein Demasi popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Susan Rubenstein Demasi books.