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Author: JDC Archives

Masters Thesis Highlights Four JDC Heroines

Masters Thesis Highlights Four JDC Heroines

A recent article in Touro Links, a magazine published by Touro Colleges Division of Graduate Studies, recounts one womans investigation into the lives of four unsung Jewish heroines. Passi Rosen-Bayewitz came to the JDC Archives to research her fourth masters thesis, which focused on Jewish women engaging in relief work abroad. A former executive director for the UJA-Federation of New York, Rosen-Bayewitz is herself no stranger to dangerous work overseas, having been arrested in 1970 by the KGB on a trip to Soviet Russia to meet with refuseniks, Jews who had been denied permission to emigrate from the Soviet...

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Explore JDC’s Extensive Photo Resources

Explore JDC’s Extensive Photo Resources

JDC’s archival holdings include a 100,000-plus image collection, which testifies to the stunning scope and diversity of the global Jewish communities with whom JDC has worked throughout the past 100 years. Encompassing JDC’s support for pre-World War I communities in Palestine to its life-saving relief in Displaced Persons camps across Europe after World War II to rescue operations in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe and numerous humanitarian interventions at historic junctures, JDC’s image collection serves as a priceless window onto JDC’s operations around the world and the communities and individuals it continues to serve. The “Photographs” web resource...

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Records from JDC Istanbul Office Collection 1937-1949 Now Available Online

Records from JDC Istanbul Office Collection 1937-1949 Now Available Online

 The JDC Archives Istanbul Collection, documenting JDCs life-saving work from Turkey during and after World War II, is now available online. Browse Collection Highlights here. This collection, housed in the Jerusalem office of the JDC Archives, comprises over 47,000 pages on 14 microfilm reels and chronicles JDC work in Turkey from 1937-1949. The records testify to JDCs efforts to move the planning of rescue and relief operations to neutral countries such as Turkey. Turkey was strategically located at the crossroads of war-torn Europe and the nascent Jewish state in Palestine. In addition, these records highlight the Istanbul offices partnership...

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Collection of 40,000 Deposit Cards from the World War II Era Features Albert Einstein Record

Collection of 40,000 Deposit Cards from the World War II Era Features Albert Einstein Record

The card (pictured right) illustrates that Albert Einstein deposited funds with JDC towards the travel costs of Hugo Moos, a friend or a relative living in his hometown of Ulm, Germany.  Included are Einstein’s name and address in Princeton, NJ. JDC established its Transmigration Bureau in 1940 in New York to help refugees emigrate from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, primarily to the U.S. Its primary role was to accept deposits from friends or family overseas towards the travel costs of Jews emigrating from Europe. The JDC Archives has indexed deposit cards for 37,732 individuals who emigrated...

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JDC Materials Featured in New Documentary on Jewish Refugees in Manila during WWII

JDC Materials Featured in New Documentary on Jewish Refugees in Manila during WWII

  The incredible and previously untold story of how over 1,000 German and Austrian Jewish refugees were assisted by five Jewish businessmen from Cincinnati to flee Nazi Europe and immigrate to the Philippines is now vividly brought forth in a new documentary, Rescue in the Philippines. Employing archival documents, historic images, and primary source interviews, Rescue in the Philippines details how the five Frieder brothers, cigar manufacturers whose factories were located in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, decided to do something to help rescue Jews from Nazi Europe. They used their personal and social connections to collaborate with...

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