I’ve been away from the blog on a different project, but I wanted to share something that gave me the chills.
Someone on Twitter (@yteutsch) linked to an article from NPR about a new online archive of material from the time of the Second World War. The American Joint Distribution Committee aids Jewish refugees to emigrating to countries all around the world (except for Israel, which is handled by the Jewish Agency).
With over 500,000 names, and more than 1,000 photographs, the searchable collection documents the relief organization’s vast efforts during World War II and the postwar era in 24 countries, from China and Japan to the Dominican Republic and Bolivia. The records, being made available online for the first time on Monday, open a singular view into the lives of survivors that the JDC aided during that cataclysmic period.
NPR listed the wrong address for the website, but I found the correct one and typed in my father’s last name. Within two minutes I was looking at a record of the trip my father made from Barcelona to Colombia in 1946. We learned the date of the trip, and the name of the ship.
I posted the information about the archives on Facebook and sent it to a few local email lists. A number of people wrote that they found information about their family.
If you have relatives who were refugees/survivors from World War II who may have been aided by the “Joint,” check out the new archives. Here is the link:
American Joint Distribution Committee Shared Archives
More posts on the Holocaust:
Just an FYI…the “someone” is the head of the Joint Archive in Jerusalem.
Oh!!!
🙂 I met him here at my workplace a few weeks ago…
B”H Thank you.
Thank you so much for posting this link.
I found my uncle’s name and forwarded the link to his two children. They were very surprised to see that he had originally wanted to go to Australia. Too bad he is no longer with us to ask about that.
I also found a cousin of my father’s, who also recently passed away. My father had so few relatives left that ANYbody who survived was a ‘close’ relative…
This is quite fascinating and I can’t even imagine how moving it was to see your father’s name and find information about him.