Gottschalk, Max, 1889-

Max Gottschalk was the American Joint Distribution Committee's (JDC's) trust representative in pre-war Belgium. Born in Liege in 1889, he became a social scientist, joining the Institute of Sociology of the Free University of Brussels as a research professor in 1923, he later became Government Commissioner for Unemployment and President of the Social Security Board of Belgium. As President of the Belgian Committee for Refugees from Nazi Germany, he was instrumental in the rescue of the passengers of the ship 'St Louis', that was sent back from Cuba and finally permitted to land in Antwerp in July 1939. He got out of Belgium in 1940, emigrating to America and became the president of HICEM, the Jewish migration organisation.