70 years after the tragic Kielce pogrom, TIME features JDC’s postwar Poland archive, highlighting its efforts to aid survivors of the massacre and rebuild Jewish life directly after the Holocaust. Confiscated in 1949, the archival trove is now online and searchable. Read the article here:...
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“Cyprus is one stop on the road of suffering on the way to the land of Israel. It means thorny barbed wire fences, forced idleness, and degeneration. Even in this existence there was life. Friends from the camp in Cyprus tell about this life in this book.” –Students of the Rutenberg Seminar, album (Cyprus, c. 1948). In August 1946, the British government initiated a policy of deporting Jews who tried to enter Palestine illegally, in violation of the immigration quotas for Jews set by the White Paper of 1939. These refugees, the majority of them Holocaust survivors, were...
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The JDC Archives is pleased to announce that information regarding over 3,000 Polish and Soviet Jewish families assisted by JDC in Vienna and Rome in the years 1969-1975 has been added to the JDC Archives Names Index. This genealogical resource is now available online. Polish and Soviet Jewish refugees who were assisted by JDC in 1969-1975 and their descendants can search the Names Index at http://archives.jdc.org.php7-34.lan3-1.websitetestlink.com/search-the-archives/. During these years, Jews leaving Poland and the Soviet Union were assisted by JDC in Vienna and Rome where they awaited processing for immigration to the United States and other countries including Canada,...
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Archives volunteer Claus Hirsch shares personal and professional insights. Type in the name and your family history unfolds. A genealogist’s dream. The JDC Archives has been spearheading an effort to digitize historical records of Jewish genealogical interest. Names of JDC aid recipients’ from voluminous lists throughout the world form the core of the project. A cadre of four volunteers, including myself, began the indexing work in January 2010. Six years later, joined by other volunteers, we remain committed to expanding the database. The JDC Archives Names Index, made possible through the work of dedicated volunteers, has become a most...
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Interview with Dr. Rachel Rothstein. Q: What is your connection to JDC? A: My connection to JDC dates back to my study abroad term in Prague in 2002. I was curious about Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe after the Holocaust. JDC was, of course, instrumental in supporting Jewish life in the region. And in August 2004 I was off to Timișoara in Romania for a one-year stint as a JDC/Jewish Service Corps volunteer to do Jewish outreach work with youth. Q: What did you do as a JDC/Jewish Service Corps volunteer? And what did that experience mean...
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