Charles H. Jordan

Charles Harold Jordan (born February 7, 1908, died August 16–20, 1967) was an American Jewish humanitarian who worked as the executive vice president for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee until his death.

Jordan moved from the United States to Germany as a child. As an adult, he fled to Prague after being attacked by his wife's Nazi-brother, before returning to the U.S.. His work took him to Cuba, China, France, and Switzerland.

He died in Prague in 1967 amidst unclear circumstances. Czechoslovak authorities stated that Jordan died by drowning in the Vltava River and alleged suicide. However, Czechoslovak defector Josef Frolík reported in 1974 that Jordan died in the Egyptian embassy in Prague, at the hands of Palestinian interrogators after being abducted. He was posthumously awarded the Nansen Refugee Award in 1968.

Life Jordan was born in Philadelphia on February 7, 1908, to Jewish parents Hertha and R. Alfred Jordan. After the breakup of his parents, his mother took him and his sister to Berlin, where he attended school. He was educated at the University of Berlin.

As an adult, Jordan was a Zionist whose first job was with engineering company Orenstein & Koppel.

Jordan joined the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in 1941, initially as the director of the Caribbean region, based at the organisation's regional headquarters in Havana, Cuba. based in Shanghai. In 1948, he led the JDC's emigration department in Paris Jordan also worked with the United Nations to support the needs of Burmese, Tibetan, Vietnamese, and Palestinian refugees. In 1967, he wrote to UNHCR calling for better support for Palestinian refugees.

Jordan's employers, the JDC, had commonly been denounced in communist press as a "subversive Zionist agency". The American government twice asked Czechoslovak authorities for an official inquiry into Jordan's death.

Jordan was posthumously awarded the Nansen Refugee Award on September 27, 1968.

In July 2007, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee made a request to the United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to re-open the investigation into Jordan's death.