Subject Guide: Migrations and Immigration

​AJDC Landsmanshaftn Department. (RG 335.7)

This collection contains mainly correspondence between staff of the JDC Landsmanshaftn Department and members of various landsmanshaftn, benevolent organizations of immigrants originally from the same communities, as well as between the Landsmanshaftn Department and the interest-free loan associations (gmilas khesed societies) and heads of the various Jewish communities, mostly in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

AJDC Personal Service Department (Transmigration Bureau) (RG 335.6)

The collection consists of correspondence, memoranda, minutes of meetings, reports, affidavits, lists, printed materials relating to the activities of the Personal Service Department, 1946-54. The collection contains 1,899 files. The original materials were destroyed after microfilming.

Committee for the Study of Recent Immigration from Europe (CSRIE) (RG 595)

The collection contains general correspondence from 1944-1947. There are also materials on various refugee organizations, both Christian and Jewish, such as correspondence, printed material, reports. Interviews with refugee scientists, physicians and artists, including Nobel Prize recipients who made outstanding contributions to American life.

German Jewish Children's Aid (RG 249) [Digitized]

The German Jewish Children's Aid was established in the U.S. in 1934 to receive and place Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany. The GJCA negotiated with the U.S. government for the admission of a limited number of children within the quota law. It guaranteed financial support, worked with local community agencies to find foster homes, met the children at the port of entry and transferred them to their new places of residence. 

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) collection (RG 245) 

The records of HIAS reflect the activities of all its administrative offices in the United States and abroad. The collection comprises the records of HIAS, HICEM and the United HIAS Service, and is divided into several subgroups.

​Landsmanshaftn (RG 123)

This collection houses fragmentary records of Jewish benevolent societies and federations known under the name of "landsmanshaftn," or mutual aid societies that were established by immigrants. The individual "landsmanshaftn" in this extensive collection lacked sufficient documents to constitute record groups in their own right. Immigrant founders were usually, but not exclusively, from the same villages, towns and cities in Eastern Europe.

National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany (RG 247) [Digitized]

The National Coordinating Committee was established in 1934 by the AJDC at the suggestion of the State Department. The NCC was to maintain close links with the Intergovernmental High Commission for Refugees established at the League of Nations in 1933 to deal with the problem of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. The NCC's main function was to coordinate the relief work of affiliated private refugee agencies in the U.S. The financial support of the NCC came mainly from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The NCC was succeeded in 1939 by the National Refugee Service which was formed to deal with the great increase in immigration from all countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

National Refugee Service (RG 248) [Digitized]

This collection contains the records of the National Refugee Service (NRS), a refugee aid organization founded in New York City in 1939 to assist refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. A successor agency to the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany, which had operated as an umbrella organization of refugee aid agencies since 1934, the NRS remained in existence until 1946, when it was merged into the new organization United Service for New Americans.The records include minutes, correspondence, memoranda, and reports related to the board of directors; the executive director; lay advisory committees; the various departments within the NRS; special committees assisting professional groups, including physicians, musicians, rabbis, social workers, and scholars; and cooperating refugee-assistance committees and organizations across the United States.

United Service for New Americans (USNA) (RG 246)

The USNA was organized in New York in 1946 through a merger of the National Refugee Service and the Service to Foreign Born of the National Council of Jewish Women in response to the postwar influx of Jewish refugees into the U.S. The activities of USNA, similar to those of its predecessor organizations, were expanded to deal with the increase in immigration and included stages of integration into American society. USNA worked on resettlement of immigrants throughout the U.S., locating relatives, providing port reception services, shelter, financial aid, placement services, vocational training, and assisting in the Americanization and naturalization process. 

A century of East European Jewish immigration. Washington, D.C.? Bnai Brith, Klutznick Exhibit Hall, n.d. 

A century of Jewish immigration to the United States / by Oscar and Mary F. Handlin. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1949. 

In the golden land: a century of Russian and Soviet Jewish immigration in America / by Rita J. Simon. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997. 

Jewish mass settlement in the United States: documents and pictures from the Yivo Archives on Eastern European Jewish immigration in the past hundred years / Catalogue of an exhibition on the occasion of the Fortieth Anniversary Conference of Yivo, April 30-May 5, 1966. Arranged by Zosa Szajkowski. New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1966.

The attitude of American Jews to East European Jewish immigration (1881-1893) / by Zosa Szajkowski, S.l., 1951. 

Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British immigration policy, Jewish refugees and the Holocaust / by Louise London. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 

150,000 immigrants are coming to America: how the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Soc. is preparing to receive them / by Lead Pencil B. Botwinik, n.d.