By DAVID OATS

From the ashes of World War I, there rose a Phoenix of hope and international cooperation – the United Nations.

For the first time, since the failed League of Nations, there would be established an instrument where nations and peoples could settle their differences in the diplomatic arena rather than on the bloody fields of battle.

Herein follows a brief history of how the United Nations, still the greatest hope for world peace, was founded in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the most ethnically diverse county in the country – Queens.

President Roosevelt’s dream of a “United Nations” was the first order of business of a war-weary world picking up the pieces from the greatest conflict in human history. In San Francisco on Oct. 24, 1945, the charter of this new international organization was signed by the 51 member nations. Eager to not repeat the isolationist mistake that doomed the League of Nations, President Harry S. Truman committed the American people to this peacekeeping body.

The infant United Nations needed a home and the U.S., now at the pinnacle of world power, was selected as the host country. San Francisco and Philadelphia made strong bids to become the site of the U.N. and so Mayor William O’Dwyer formed a committee of 12 prominent New Yorkers to prepare a proposal that would insure the selection of New York City as permanent headquarters of the world organization.

Robert Moses was named chairman of this committee, which included such notables as Nelson A. Rockefeller, Former Roosevelt advisor and postmaster-general James Farley, N.Y., Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger and former Fair president Grover Whalen. After extensive-research and planning, the panel issued a report contained in an impressive book with sketches and designs for a magnificent World Capitol, which the city would provide to the United Nations. The site they chose was Flushing Meadow.

President Harry Truman delivers the opening address at the United Nations at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in 1946.

“I believe that we have in Flushing Meadow Park in Queens a very accessible site in every way suited to the present and future requirements of the United Nations for working space for the World Capitol in surroundings which insure protection from all unfavorable influences,” Mayor O’Dwyer stated in his introduction to the report.

The proposal offered to donate most of the central body of the park for U.N. use and future expansion. Architects’ renderings detailed huge structures for the various agencies of the organization surrounded by lagoons and amphitheaters. A residence for the Secretary General would be located on the site. “I urge that those officials of the United Nations charged with the final responsibility for selecting the permanent site of the World Capitol give full and serious consideration to Flushing Meadow Park. If they do, I believe that they will find nothing else comparable to it.” O’Dwyer said.

On the strength of that proposal, New York City was chosen as the home for the World Capitol by Secretary General Trygve Lie and the U.N. However, the donation by the Rockefeller family of over $8 million for the purchase of a property in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan along First Avenue by the East River made that the permanent location. A maze of slaughterhouses and slum dwellings, the Manhattan site would be reclaimed in a mini-version of the dump to glory sage of Flushing Meadows. The architect who would design the permanent glass tower for the U.N. was Wallace K. Harrison – the man who had designed the Trylon and Perisphere a decade before.

Until the new structure was built, however, the United Nations world has to meet the challenge of keeping the peace in a fragile world. They would need a meeting place and they selected the New York City building in the park as that place. The world had returned to Flushing Meadows.

The ice rink was covered over and replaced by the seats of the delegates of the countries that made up the U.N. Among those delegates were Adlai Stevenson, Dag Hammerskjold, Golda Meir, Andrei Gromyko and Eleanor Roosevelt who saw her late husband’s dream of a world peacekeeping organization come true at the very site in which he had envisioned it eight years before when FDR first visited the fairgrounds.

On the 23rd of October, Trygve Lie convened the first session of the General Assembly in the New York City Building. Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent Impelliteri handed over the keys of the building to the U.N.

President Truman came to deliver the opening address. “All nations large and small are represented here,” the President stated. “This Assembly is the world’s supreme deliberative body. The highest obligation of this assembly is to speak for all mankind in such a way as to promote the unity of all members in behalf of a peace that will be lasting because it is founded upon justice. It must be everlasting,” said Truman and he quoted the scriptures. “Swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and nations shall not learn war anymore.

By DAVID OATS

On the eastern rim of the Mediterranean there is a small section of earth that, although only half the size of New Jersey, had been the very center of the universe for the mapmakers of antiquity, the destination of all the roads. Palestine.

In the converted ice skating rink at the N.Y. City Building in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in the late fall of 1947, the delegates of 56 of the 57 members of the United Nations General Assembly would be called upon to decide the future of that sliver of land.

The fledgling United Nations had been meeting at Flushing Meadows for over a year, when in November of ’47 its members participated in a debate that stirred unparalleled emotions. Each of its members could in some way trace a part of its spiritual heritage to Palestine. In the post-war world and the wake of the Holocaust, they would decide on a proposal that called for the splitting of that ancient territory into two separate states – one Arab, one Jewish.  

After the end of World War II, the Jewish people came face to face with an overwhelming and ghastly reality. Six million Jews had been systematically killed. Their cry was, “Never Again.” Their preoccupation was now with the task of gathering the survivors of the Holocaust into Palestine as quickly as possible and constructing a strong and self-reliant society so that such a horror could never take place again.

And it was at Flushing Meadows in Queens that history came to a crucial moment.

In that autumn of 1947, the Jews – and most of the world – had beseeched the United Nations to grant a Jewish state. The debate in the cavernous grey hall was intense.

To the Arabs – and above all for the 1.2 million Arabs of Palestine – the partitioning of the land in which they had been a majority for seven centuries seemed an injustice imposed upon them by Western imperialism for a crime they did not commit.

For Britain – the nation that had administered Palestine for 30 difficult years – the debate offered an end to a nightmare; two years after the end of World War II it was the only place on the globe where British soldiers were still dying in conflict.

In a direct order from the White House, President Harry S. Truman told the U.S. Delegates at Flushing Meadows to “damn well deliver the partition or there will be hell to pay.” Yet, on the date originally set for the crucial vote, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 1947, the prospect of defeat hung heavy over the hall.

A two-thirds majority was needed to pass the resolution. To offset the votes of the Arab-Moslem nations alone, the Jewish Agency, which represented the Zionist movement, needed 22 votes, more than a third of the General Assembly. After a 2,000-year wait, the Jewish people concluded they would have to wait a little longer to find the votes needed to secure the partition’s passage.

After a long debate, at five o’clock, Assembly president Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil gaveled down the last speaker and solemnly informed the gathering at New York City that the vote would be taken. An aide handed Ranha a basket containing 56 slips of paper, each representing a nation in the hall. He extended his hand and slowly drew the name of the country whose vote would begin the roll call. He unfolded the paper and stares at the delegates assembled before him. “Guatemala,” he announced.

Silence fell over the hall. Even the press gallery was hushed as delegates, spectators and newsmen sat in awe of the solemn decision which was about to take place. As the delegate from Guatemala rose, a piercing Hebrew cry as old as time sounded from the silence of the Assembly hall. From the spectators gallery an old man shouted, “Ana Ad Hoshiya,” – “O Lord, Save us.”

Six thousand miles away from the New York City Building, in the midnight blue of this November night, the people of Jerusalem waited for the decision that a handful of men would soon make that would decide the fate of their land.

Over a crackling radio, Golda Meir sat alone, noting each vote on a notepad that brought her closer to a lifetime’s dream.

In the Arab sector, a Palestinian leader declared that “a group of old men at Flushing Meadow will not decide the fate of our people.”

Shortly after sundown, the vote was over. The United Nations had voted to create the State of Israel.

Just as Paris had lived its liberation night, and London and New York had celebrated the end of the war, Jewish Jerusalem now erupted into an explosion of joy as doors were flung open and neighbors called out to each other in the dark, “We have a state!” At the White House, Truman declared, within moments of the vote, that the United States formally recognized the new State of Israel.

Meantime, in front of the City Building in Queens the crowds danced around the United Nations’ circle of flagpoles and later broke into the singing of the Hatikva. On Nov. 29, 1947, the past and future of a great and sacred land were joined as the destiny of a new nation and an ancient people was decided at Flushing Meadows.