Elena Hoffenberg Lectures on Family and Credit in Interwar Poland

This lecture, delivered by Elena Hoffenberg on January 13, 2025, examines the free loan associations and credit cooperatives, funded by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, —known as kasses in Yiddish and kasy bezprocentowe in Polish— which provided access to credit for the Jews of Eastern Europe during and after the First World War. In Poland, these funds served as a source for financial support through the economic downturns and changing state policy of the interwar decades. This webinar explores how gender, family, and commerce shaped the planning and implementation of this program of reconstruction.

This is the fourth program in the JDC Archives webinar series “Exploring the Jewish Experience in Poland from WWI to the Holocaust: Insights from the JDC Archives.”

This lecture is made possible thanks to the Miriam “Mimi” Pasternak Toubin (z”l) Public Educational Programming from the JDC Archives.

Elena Hoffenberg is a PhD candidate in modern Jewish history at the University of Chicago.