That special atmosphere outside of national boundaries”: Three Jewish directors and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

Jack L. Davis Annuario della Scuola Archeologica Italiana di Atene LXXXVII (2010): 133-145.

Abstract (from the Introduction)

By the start of WWII, members of ASCSA had long been committed to public service in Greece, especially as it concerned the needs of refugees and the victims of disasters. In 1918-1919, Edward Capps, professor of Classics at Princeton University and newly elected Chair of the Managing Committee of ASCSA, took temporary leave from the latter post to lead a Red Cross mission to Greece. Many at ASCSA were enlisted in the mission, including Bert Hodge Hill, the director, and Carl W. Blegen, the assistant director. In Macedonia the Bulgarian retreat in the wake of the armistice at the end of WW I had wreaked havoc. Thousands of ethnic Greeks were homeless and without resources as they returned from Bulgaria where they had been taken as hostages. The plight of the Jews in Thessaloniki was a special concern since many had previously been left destitute as a result of the great fire that destroyed much of the ghetto in 1917.