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Author: JDC Archives

Medals of Honor

Medals of Honor

For Holocaust survivor Wiktor Lezerkiewicz (Victor Lewis), soccer games at Bad Ischl Displaced Persons camp played an essential role in his postwar life. Originally from Krakow, Poland, Victor was active in the Jewish community, serving as a founder and continuous active board member of the Crakow Friendship Society and a board member of the Friends of Israel Disabled Veterans-Beit Halochem until his death in 2009. During the war, he was held captive in the Krakow Ghetto, at the Plashov concentration camp, and eventually became an inmate in Oskar Schindler’s factory in Brünnlitz, Chechoslovakia. He was interned with his wife,...

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Rare JDC Archives Treasures Digitized

Rare JDC Archives Treasures Digitized

On May 26th, the JDC Archives was privileged to welcome Ardon Bar-Hama to its climate-controlled facility in Long Island City, New York, to digitally photograph some of the more unique items in its collection. Bar-Hama, a world-renowned photographer, is known for digitally photographing treasured objects in major libraries, museums, archives, and private collections across the globe. Besides the traditional text and photograph holdings already available through the Archives’ online database, the JDC Archives also holds many oversized materials such as posters, rare newspaper clippings, and three-dimensional artifacts that are difficult to capture via traditional scanning methods. Bar-Hama’s digital photographs...

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JDC Archives Staff Present at Conferences across the Globe

JDC Archives Staff Present at Conferences across the Globe

While the JDC Archives is located in two centers, at its NY headquarters and in Jerusalem, its reach is truly global. The Archives has begun 2015 with a whirlwind season of exchange at academic and professional forums, with a presence at conferences in Europe, Israel and the United States. Sharing scholarship and information about its holdings, liaising with partners, and publicizing new projects enable the JDC Archives to be a vibrant contributing member of the scholarly and archives communities. Highlights include: – Jeff Edelstein, Digitization Project Manager, presented at a workshop in Berlin in March entitled The Stuff of...

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Documenting JDC’s Work in the Soviet Union

Documenting JDC’s Work in the Soviet Union

The document pictured to the right represents the opening of a new chapter in JDC’s work in the former Soviet Union. In 1991, a multi-entry visa was issued to Ralph Goldman, allowing travel among Washington, Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, and Vilnius, between July 1, 1991 and April 5, 1992. This visa reflects the outcome of Goldman’s extended and sensitive negotiations, during his second term as JDC’s Chief Executive Officer from 1986-1988, with Soviet officials in the Department of Religious Affairs, successfully navigating JDC’s return to what became the former Soviet Union and its efforts to rebuild local Jewish community life...

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JDC and the War Refugee Board

JDC and the War Refugee Board

  Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist and curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), recently defended her doctoral dissertation, “About Time: The History of the War Refugee Board.” The War Refugee Board (WRB), established by an Executive Order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 22, 1944, represented the U.S. official response to the issue of providing relief and rescue to Nazi victims during World War II (WWII). Erbelding researched sources from repositories in Washington, D.C.; Austin, Texas; Hyde Park, NY—and at JDC. What is the JDC connection? JDC served as the WRB’s primary funder, providing almost $15...

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