Oral History Collection
JDC’s Oral History Collection includes over 150 interviews conducted with JDC staff members and community leaders between 1966 and 2022. These extraordinary testimonies from JDC staff and partners “on the front lines” worldwide detail their responses to humanitarian disasters over the past century and offer users a unique perspective on Jewish history and the evolution of humanitarian involvement throughout the twentieth century.
Interviewees reflect the global scope and geographic breadth of JDC’s relief initiatives. These individuals include “lifetime” JDC staff and community leaders working in: displaced persons camps after World War II; communities in Cuba, France, Germany, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, and Turkey; refugee resettlement and Holocaust survivor rehabilitation programs in Israel; aid and rescue operations in Algeria, Ethiopia, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen; and Eastern Europe against the backdrop of Communism.
These oral histories enrich and transcend the historic record of JDC’s rescue, relief, and renewal efforts and make accessible to users a treasure trove of primary source material from those who designed and delivered aid around the world and adapted to meet historic crises over the past century.
To access the finding aid to JDC’s Oral History Collection, please click here.
