First professional director, served 1948 to 1976

Dr. Alfred M. Neumann served as executive director and executive vice president of Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Colorado (now Jewish Family Service of Colorado) from 1948 to 1976. His pioneering work included reorganization of the entire social service program of the agency, organization of family counseling, and developments of programs in child placement and adoptions and immigration services. Dr. Neumann organized the vocational guidance service including psychological and vocational testing.

With board members John Kamlet (z”l) and Bob Aaron (z”l), he helped organize Jewish Family Service’s Utility Workshop in 1954, which later became known as SHALOM Denver. SHALOM Denver originally provided vocational training, employment, and social and emotional support to Holocaust survivors and later assisted refugees who had fled persecution in Iron Curtain countries during the Cold War. In the 1970s, the facility began to serve Jewish and non-Jewish adults with developmental disabilities and was hailed as a national model by the Nixon Administration.

Through his work with Jewish Family Service of Colorado and as a consultant with many other agencies throughout the country, Dr. Neumann tried to find better ways to resettle displaced persons and to help them deal with individual and family problems. During his tenure at JFS, he held various external executive posts in both private and official committees, including the Governor’s Committee on Resettlement of Refugees.

Dr. Neumann received a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Vienna in 1934 and until 1937 worked in the criminal and civil courts in Vienna. Following Hitler’s occupation of Austria, he was a counselor in the immigration department in Vienna and was instrumental in organizing relief efforts to needy Jewish families, furnishing emergency housing facilities, setting up retraining programs, and helping with immigration problems in the Jewish community.

In 1938, Dr. Neumann left Vienna and eventually escaped to the United States. He received his master’s degree in social work from Columbia University in 1941. Before coming to Denver, Dr. Neumann worked with the Jewish Social Service Association in New York City, with the Youth Bureau in Cleveland, Ohio, and with the Jewish Family and Children Services of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received postgraduate training in family and marital counseling at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work and at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work. He was a licensed psychotherapist and continued a small private practice after his retirement from Jewish Family Service of Colorado.