The Harvard Committee to Aid German Student Refugees was established in November 1938 to aid Jewish students suffering from Nazi persecution in Germany. The purpose of the Committee was to help secure scholarships for student refugees and to help "relieve the intolerable condition in which persons of religious belief, of races, or of opinions which vary with those favored by the Nazi government now find themselves."
The Harvard Corporation responded to an appeal from the Committee by agreeing to pay for twenty scholarships of $500 each for "qualified refugee students of any creed from Germany." The offer was made with the provision that the Committee pay the living expenses for each student refugee. Scholarships were limited to upperclassmen and graduate school students. The Committee raised funds through a campaign aimed at fellow students, faculty, staff members, and alumni. The Corporation accepted $5000 from the Elizabeth Glendower Evans Fund to meet its own obligation. A faculty committee was organized to select scholarship recipients. By 1942, when the program ended, 14 student refugees from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia had come to Harvard to study.
In June 1990, eight former scholarship recipients and three members of the Committee gathered to recognize and celebrate the activities of the Committee. A commemorative linden tree was planted near Boylston Hall in Harvard Yard and a plaque was embedded in the ground beneath the tree honoring the faculty, staff, and alumni whose generosity "opened doors to Student Refugees from Nazi Persecution."
