Virginia Heim George papers

The Virginia Heim George papers consist of correspondence, diaries, clippings, and photographs. A major portion of the material dates from 1940 to 1948 and is related to her foreign secretary work for the YWCA in South America and Czechoslovakia and her USO work in the Caribbean.

The papers are divided into two series, PERSONAL and PROFESSIONAL. The PERSONAL material contains correspondence and diaries, both ranging from 1940 to 1981. The correspondence consists of letters to her family, mostly to her mother, with a small amount of incoming correspondence from family and friends, 1945-50. The nine diaries consist of six written between 1940 and 1948, plus three travel accounts from 1953, 1965, and 1981. Both the letters and diaries provide a detailed description of George's life while working for the YWCA and the USO. She was an eager and enthusiastic participant in her work and also took advantage of the opportunities it provided to travel extensively. She was a keen observer of the countries she visited and the people she met. Her wartime letters as well and those from postwar Czechoslovakia reflect the mail censorship of the times. As a result the diaries and the occasional letters that she was able to write freely are more candid. The diaries written from her two trips to Czechoslovakia in 1965 and 1981 contain particularly interesting accounts of life there, and the 1965 account reports earlier arrests and trials, particularly an incident involving the YWCA in 1948.

The PROFESSIONAL material consists of clippings and articles about George and her work, 1925-1975, three reports from her Czechoslovakia and Germany experiences, 1948, and a nine-page speech on the USO, ca. 1945. In this series are also fifteen photographs, five of the USO, six related to the YWCA, and four of women in Puerto Rico.