Biographical History.
Aleta Brownlee began her employment with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration as a Welfare Specialist on the Yugoslavian Mission in 1945. Later that year she was transferred to Vienna and promoted to Director of Child Welfare in Austria. In that position, both with UNRRA and with the International Refugee Organization (which superceded UNRRA in 1947), she worked with displaced children. The Child Welfare Agency had the responsibility of locating and reestablishing, either through repatriation or resettlement, children who had been moved from their homelands during the war. Ms. Brownlee continued this work until 1950 when the International Refugee Organization ceased its activities.
The collection consists almost exclusively of UNRAA and IRO documents. Of these, a small number relate to the Welfare Program in Yugoslavia directly after the war. The overwhelming majority of documents, however, concerns the location and reestablishment of orphans and children separated from their parents. Approximately 35% of the collection is comprised of case files, complete with the children's histories and their eventual placement. Occasionally there is follow-up correspondence from the children. The remainder of the UNRRA and IRO documents concern the problems of finding children absorbed by the Third Reich and what should be done with them once found. The correspondence, memoranda and transcripts of meetings relating to the specific problems of Polish, Yugoslavian and Russian refugees are the most complete. Included in the collection is documentation relating to the roles played by various national chapters of the Red Cross and by the French, American, British and Soviet military governments. Considered all together, the UNRRA and IRO documents chronicle both the operations and the results of the Child Welfare Program in Austria from 1945 to 1950.
Also included in the collection is a manuscript, "Whose Children?," written by Aleta Brownlee ca. 1950-1951 concerning her experiences with UNRRA and IRO. In addition there is a very small miscellany file.
From the guide to the Aleta Brownlee Papers, 1945-1950., (Hoover Institution Archives)
