JDC Archives Virtual Programs: Fall 2023

The JDC Archives is offering an array of online public programs in the coming months. These events are listed below; please register for each one individually by clicking on its RSVP link. Recordings of past programs are available via our Public Programs Recordings page.

WEBINAR:

Rethinking Ashkenazi History in the Modern Middle East: Early 20th-Century Egypt and Palestine
Thursday, September 7, 2023
12:00pm–1:15pm (Eastern)

Modern Jewish Ashkenazi migration to the Middle East is typically viewed through the lens of Zionism as an ideological migration that led to the establishment of Israel. It is widely assumed that Ashkenazi migrants did not integrate into Middle Eastern society, political structures and culture in any meaningful way. Was this indeed the case? This lecture will challenge the assumption of the intrinsic Ashkenazi “separateness” and discuss the ways in which Ashkenazim negotiated their place within the late Ottoman Middle East, focusing on Palestine and Egypt. The plight of (primarily Ashkenazi) Jews in Palestine was one of the key catalysts for the establishment of JDC in 1914. The lecture will draw on the JDC Archives and other sources to provide information on the condition of Ashkenazi Jews in Palestine as well as in Egypt during wartime.

WEBINAR:

“Relief Supplies – Films”: On the Road with the JDC’s Mobile Film Units in Postwar Germany
Monday, October 16, 2023
12:00pm-1:15pm (Eastern)

In the wake of the Holocaust, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) initiated and coordinated an ambitious multi-year film screening program for Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) in postwar Germany. This “mobile cinematheque” revived Jewish DPs after years of Nazi persecution and incarceration. These wildly popular screenings across the US Zone of occupied Germany not only fueled cinematic escapism and survivors’ creative ambitions but also transformed Jewish DPs into borderless cultural citizens, eager to consume Yiddish classics and the latest in global and Hollywood cinema in equal measure, however serious, triggering, or innocuous the content.

Yet, behind the scenes and screens, the JDC’s relief program was constantly beset with obstructions and challenges that undermined its leaders’ aspirations to deliver films locally (in Germany), and its visionary ambition to become the principal film-as-relief supplier to other zones and war-torn European countries. What were the ambitions, challenges, and geography of this extensive humanitarian relief program for Jewish DPs in postwar Germany? This talk draws principally on the archives of the JDC to reconstruct and visualize the provision, scale, and succor of film screenings in, and to, a displaced society.

The JDC Archives is excited to announce a new webinar series, The Latin American and Caribbean Jewish Experience in the Twentieth Century.

The first program in the series will be:

“Bound for Nowhere”: How the JDC Became Involved in Rescue to the British Caribbean during the Nazi Period
POSTPONED

During the 1930s and the Second World War, the Caribbean became increasingly important as a refuge for those fleeing persecution from antisemitism in Eastern Europe and from the Nazi regime. From seeming an unlikely destination for refugees, as conditions worsened for Jewish populations across Europe, any places in the British Empire that did not require visas took on far more significance to refugees, refugee agencies and to the Nazi regime and Western governments. This talk is about the role of the JDC and other agencies that became essential in negotiating exits and entries, supporting refugee populations, and making the case for humanitarian actions. The dilemmas facing these organizations is starkly illustrated in their role in helping refugees to, in and from the British Caribbean. The JDC’s description of boats “bound for nowhere,” and “floating no man’s lands,” is emblematic of the dilemmas they faced then, and that refugee agencies continue to face today.