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Author: JDC Archives

Yom HaShoah and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Yom HaShoah and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Today we commemorate the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust at the hands of Nazi Germany and its co-conspirators. Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is a national memorial day in Israel that is also a day to pay tribute to the Jewish resistance that took place during the Holocaust. We share with you an excerpt from a letter of Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum, a department head of JDC Warsaw who played a major role in providing assistance in wartime Poland and in the Warsaw Ghetto. Ringelblum headed the underground “Oneg Shabbat” archival group that recorded every aspect...

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New Collaboration between JDC Archives and Memorial de la Shoah

New Collaboration between JDC Archives and Memorial de la Shoah

The JDC Archives and Memorial de la Shoah, the Holocaust museum in Paris, France, have entered into a partnership to catalogue and digitize the JDC Oral History Collection. The collection documents the work of JDC through interviews with staff and lay leaders who served across the globe between the 1930s and 1980s, as well as interviews with staff of related organizations. Long-time JDC staff member and executive Herbert Katzki, who began his career with JDC in Paris in the 1940s, initiated the JDC oral history program after his retirement in 1979. Through dozens of interviews, Katzki captured the memories...

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New Book Published on JDC’s Pioneering Social Service Work in Israel

New Book Published on JDC’s Pioneering Social Service Work in Israel

“In my research, I found that the JDC’s MALBEN program has offered the weak and needy in Israel a helping hand and a warm and understanding heart for more than 25 years. This project should be used as a local and international example of providing short and long term health care in times of crisis. These are the words that Dr. Pnina Romem, head of the nursing studies program at Beershebas Ben Gurion University and author of the recently published bookMALBEN: Mosadot Letipul Beolim Nichshalim (Eng:Malben: Institutions for the Treatement of Aged, Sick, and Handicapped Immigrants), chose to summarize...

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A Timely Seder

A Timely Seder

This historic silent footage from the film, “Passover 1947 Vienna,” is featured on our web exhibit: “Everything Possible: JDC and the Children of the DP Camps.” The clips depict JDC’s extensive efforts to create a memorable Passover for Jews in post-war Vienna. Holiday supplies, from chicken and oranges, to matzos and wine, were distributed to the Viennese Jewish community. JDC also provided for some 30,000 displaced persons in camps. Two seders are shown in this footage: the first took place at the Rothschild Transit Camp under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Ernst Israel. The second seder, for 700 Jewish...

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JDC Haggadah: Occasions of Rescue, Relief and Renewal

JDC Haggadah: Occasions of Rescue, Relief and Renewal

  As you look forward to Passover, enhance your seder with the beautifully illustrated JDC Haggadah, featuring a host of rare images and compelling documents from the JDC Archives. While the Exodus story in the Passover Haggadah took place in Biblical times, its themes of rescue, relief and renewal are as fresh as they are ancient, says renowned journalist and author Ari Goldman in his commentary to In Every Generation: The JDC Haggadah. The JDC Haggadah retells the ancient Passover story through the modern-day efforts of the JDC. The photos used represent Jewish life in different lands and show...

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