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Author: JDC Archives

JDC Archives partners with Google Cultural Institute

JDC Archives partners with Google Cultural Institute

The JDC Archives has partnered with Google Cultural Institute to bring archival treasures online to the visionary digital platform, Google Arts & Culture. On the site, the JDC Archives page will highlight close to 70 treasures from our collection, including photographs, text documents, artifacts, film, and audio, along with two abridged exhibits based on, “I Live. Send Help.,” our centennial exhibit, which was presented at the New-York Historical Society in 2014. The website is an amalgamation of Google Art Project, which spotlights high-resolution images of works of art from museums worldwide, and the World Wonders Project, which displays three-dimensional...

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Russian Children’s Art

Russian Children’s Art

Exactly half a century after its exile from the Soviet Union in 1938 with the liquidation of Agro-Joint, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) once again set foot on Soviet soil in 1989, amid the prevailing atmosphere of glasnost. Though a devoted few had risked everything to sustain a thread of Jewish life, the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 revealed a Jewish cultural wasteland imprinted by 70 years of repression. JDC went to work immediately, revitalizing Jewish communal infrastructures and strengthening Jewish identity with a range of Jewish cultural activities. To that end, JDC trained...

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Rescue through Emigration in the Nazi Era

Rescue through Emigration in the Nazi Era

  Seventy-eight years have passed since my great-grandparents, my grandparents, and their children left Nazi Germany to find refuge in South America. Now I am working on documenting my family’s lives and struggles to show the generations to come how their ancestors overcame adversity with an unquestioned faith in G-d, with hard work and determination, and with the aid of Jewish organizations, such as JDC and HIAS. The records held at the JDC Archives are key to reconstructing a piece of my family history. The Dorfzauns’ emigration is a story of coincidence, external factors, and planning. This branch of...

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Genealogical Resources in the Records of JDC’s Warsaw Office, 1939-1941

Genealogical Resources in the Records of JDC’s Warsaw Office, 1939-1941

  Genealogists, family historians, and Holocaust scholars mine various collections and many archives to search for information about Jews trapped in German-occupied Poland (the General Government). One collection in particular is at their fingertips, made available online by the JDC Archives. The records of JDC’s Warsaw Office in 1939-1941, with documents in Polish, Yiddish, German, Hebrew and English, offer a wealth of sources about Polish Jews during that time through the lens of JDC’s activities. They contain information of genealogical interest, and provide insight into the deteriorating situation of Jews in cities, towns, and villages across the General Government....

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JDC Historic Films Available for Use in the Classroom

JDC Historic Films Available for Use in the Classroom

  The JDC Archives is pleased to announce that selections from its historic film collection are now available for scholars and educators for use in the university classroom setting. Responding to requests from academics, the JDC Archives has prepared copies of digitized film and videos for classroom use. This generation of students is particularly immersed in visual media. Thus, film emerges as an effective educational tool. And film not only helps students to learn about history, but also stimulates their imagination. Screening an entire historical film or a clip can complement text analysis, and enliven classroom discussion. Teaching Jewish...

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