All JDC Records from Post-World War II Period Digitized

The JDC Archives is pleased to announce the completion of a major effort to catalogue, microfilm and digitize all of its post-Holocaust era collections, 1945-1954. The culmination of a six-year effort, this project is part of an ongoing plan to make historically significant documents available to scholars, genealogists and the general public. This material is searchable on the JDC Archives website. Online finding aids provide information on the contents of these collections and enable users to identify materials of interest to their research.

Highlights from this remarkable trove include:

• JDC’s far-reaching global rescue and relief efforts to resettle Holocaust survivors around the world
• Emigration and social services assistance to the remnant Jewish community in Poland from 1945 until JDC’s expulsion by the Communist government in 1949
• Aid to deportees to Cyprus from 1946 to 1949, against the backdrop of the birth of the State of Israel
• Its lifesaving work in neutral Turkey, a country strategically located at the crossroads of war-torn Europe and the nascent Jewish State in Palestine
• JDC’s provision of essential supplemental aid to the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in displaced persons camps after the war
• Efforts to rescue and provide relief to Holocaust survivors in Stockholm
• Oral histories of JDC veteran staff and lay leaders who were active during this period

This major effort was made possible through the generosity of a number of loyal donors. A lead gift was provided by Dr. Georgette Bennett and Dr. Leonard Polonsky, CBE. Other contributors include the Swiss Banks Settlement-Victims List Fund, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Memorial de la Shoah (Paris), the Kronhill Pletka Foundation, the Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe, the Wilf Family Foundations, and several JDC Board Members including Donald Robinson, Marshall Weinberg, and Jane Weitzman.