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Author: JDC Archives

A Tour Guide to a Century of Global Relief Work

A Tour Guide to a Century of Global Relief Work

Professor Yehuda Bauer, a world-renowned historian and Holocaust scholar, has chronicled JDC’s work in several important books, including My Brother’s Keeper: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  Prof. Bauer was invited to deliver a lecture on JDC’s history for a global staff training program.In the talk, he describes the historic breadth and diversity of JDC’s global service work during the past 100 years. Professor Bauer’s lecture is available on the JDC Archives website, divided into four chapters. • The Establishment of JDC: JDC’s founding...

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Esther Haskin and the Joint

Esther Haskin and the Joint

  In March 2012, Dr. Debby Kerdeman contacted the JDC Archives, having seen a photo (right) of her mother in our recently launched website feature of Holocaust-era photographs. “She always spoke fondly of her days in Amsterdam,” said Kerdeman of her mother’s time working for the Joint. When Esther Haskin, born in Georgia but living in Texas, graduated from Tulane University with a Master’s degree in social work in 1941, little did she know that her degree would take her to faraway Europe. But heed the call she did, and she journeyed to Amsterdam via New York to help...

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Insight into Moses Beckelman: neither pencil-pusher nor pushover

Insight into Moses Beckelman: neither pencil-pusher nor pushover

His initials are penned in a corner of nearly every document filed in JDC’s Paris headquarters in the early 1950s. Moe, as he was affectionately called by friends and JDC executives, was Director of JDC Overseas Operations from 1951-1955. He signed on with “the Joint” in 1939 and was assigned to Kovno, Lithuania (formerly Poland). In 1939 when Russia seized the city of Vilna from Poland, and turned it over to Lithuania, Beckelman was sent to Vilna to oversee JDC operations with both refugees and the local Jewish population. Beckelman sought first-hand knowledge of the hardships JDC was trying...

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Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and JDC’s Response

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and JDC’s Response

  On the evening of November 9, 1938, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out against Jews in Nazi Germany, Austria and areas of German-occupied Czechoslovakia. The violent pogroms were waged by the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party and non-Jewish civilians, and with the complicity of the German authorities who failed to stop the violence. The name Kristallnacht, literally “Night of Crystal,” comes from the shards of broken glass that were remnants of the synagogues, buildings and stores of the victimized Jews. JDC had been assisting Jews in Germany throughout the 1930s, as they became disenfranchised and...

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Oral History Collection Sheds New Light on JDC’s Past

Oral History Collection Sheds New Light on JDC’s Past

JDCs Oral History Collection offers new perspectives on JDC history from the people who helped to shape the organization. In August 1946, Jacob (Jack) Joslow, JDCs Director of Education for the U.S. Zone in Germany, was asked to procure 35,000 prayer books for Rosh Hashanah. The New Year was just weeks away, and JDC wanted desperately to supply the prayer books to Jews in German DP camps. In his oral history, Joslow recalls how against all odds, 35,000 prayer books were printed, assembled and finally delivered on Erev Rosh Hashanah. Joslows story, along with other dramatic narratives, has been...

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