Genealogical Resources on Immigrants to Eretz Yisrael

Are you looking for information about individuals who immigrated to Palestine, and later to the State of Israel? Several lists of adults, children, and entire families who received JDC assistance to make aliyah in 1944-1949 are now indexed and available to search in the JDC Archives Names Database:

• Refugees who immigrated via North Africa to Palestine, 1944.
• Passengers on the Turkish ship SS Kazbek who received JDC aid 1944.
• Children on the first postwar convoy from France to Palestine, 1945.
• Births to Cyprus detainees, 1948-1949.
• Phases of Operation Magic Carpet Yemenite Airlift, December 1948-July 1950.

Read about our efforts to index the extensive lists of Yemenite Jews, and learn about our partnership with the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) to translate the names from English to Hebrew here.

These sources document the fates of thousands of European Jews and Yemenite Jews who were forced to leave their countries of origin due to political, economic, social, or Zionist reasons, and who settled in the Jewish Homeland. Links to these full lists are available here, under “Aliyah to Israel.”

The eight lists currently indexed reveal a treasure trove of genealogical information. Apart from names, you may find a person’s age, date of birth, place of birth, nationality, group affiliation (such as pioneers), family status, and even such detail as one’s weight.

These lists offer a wealth of other information, too. They speak to the journeys of Jewish refugees from their homes to ports of embarkation onto ships, or to camps whence they were airlifted. We learn about the cooperation among JDC, local relief committees, religious authorities, and governmental agencies in organizing the departure, and thus rescue, of Jews. And we learn about the stages of emigration to Palestine, and later Israel, which illuminate how these immigration waves affected the makeup of the country.