Metadata: American Joint Distribution Committee (1945–9)
Collection
- Country:
- Poland
- Holding institution:
- The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute
- Holding institution (official language):
- Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. E. Ringelbluma
- Postal address:
- ul. Tłomackie 3/5, 00-090 Warszawa
- Phone number:
- (+48 22) 827 92 21
- Web address:
- http://www.jhi.pl/
- Email:
- secretary@jhi.pl
- Reference number:
- PL 312/350/
- Title:
- American Joint Distribution Committee (1945–9)
- Title (official language):
- American Joint Distribution Committee (1945–9)
- Creator/accumulator:
- American Joint Distribution Committee
- Date(s):
- 1945/1949
- Language:
- Polish
- English
- French
- German
- Yiddish
- Extent:
- 40 linear metres (2,445 archival units)
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Photographic images
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The archive comprises materials produced at the Warsaw headquarters, American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) storerooms and the transportation department in Gdynia.
The prefix ‘350/’ always comes before the file reference number for the unit/folder:
I. Secretariat – units 1-490:
General organisational files and records, correspondence – units 1-297: circulars, bulletins, reports, instructions received from headquarters in New York, Jerusalem and Paris; reports, statistical breakdowns, correspondence registers.
Personal files – units 298-425: correspondence related to search, aid and assistance, emigration; correspondence re. children.
Personal files of AJDC staff in Poland – units 426-490: correspondence re. food and clothes rations, name lists, payrolls; correspondence with the Tax Office and Social Insurance Office; records of the employees’ trade union.
II. Legal Department – units 491-492.
III. Controlling Department – units 493-552: work plans, meeting records, inspection and control reports.
IV. Search Department – units 553-1162:
General organisational files; correspondence – units 553-624: communications and circulars from the Directors, Secretariat, AJDC (Poland) Team Club Board; expenditure estimate; correspondence; reports.
Personal files – units 625-1162: card files; correspondence re. search of relatives, incoming from various organisations, including National Council of Jewish Women (New York), Jewish Search Centre (London) Jewish Refugees Committee (London), Canadian Jewish Congress (Montreal), United Jewish Refugee & War Relief Agencies of Canada, Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada (Toronto); lists of names of searched-for individuals.
V. Individual Aid Department – units 1163-1281: general correspondence, individual aid-related folders:
General organisational files – units 1163-1165.
Personal files – units 1166-1266: general correspondence, name lists.
Medical affairs – units 1267-1281.
VI. Homeland Associations Department – units 1282-1362:
General organisational files – units 1282-1319.
Personal files – units 1320-1359: general correspondence, name lists.
Financial records – units 1360-1362.
VII. Emigration Department – units 1363-1890:
General organisational files – units 1363-1403.
Personal files – units 1404-1890: general correspondence, name lists, card files, individual folders.
Children’s Section records – units 1881-1889.
VIII. Transportation Department – units 1891-2090.
IX. Transportation Department, Gdynia – units 2091-2179.
General files – units 2091-2163.
Personal files of staff – units 2164-2170: general correspondence, name lists.
Financial records – units 2171-2179.
X. Warehouse Department – units 2180-2267:
General files – units 2171-2263.
Personal files of staff – unit 2264.
Financial records – units 2265-2267.
XI. Accounting Department – units 2268-2416.
XII. Economic (Administration) Department – units 2417-2424.
XIII. Provisions Section – unit 2425.
XIV. Miscellaneous – units 2426-2445.
- Archival history:
- The archive of the Polish AJDC headquarters (1945-49) encompasses a considerable portion of the materials generated by the Joint in Poland between 1945 and 1949. We can try and reconstruct an original picture of the organisation’s team based upon two incomplete descriptions of the archive, of which the first is dated end 1949 and the second was compiled at the ŻIH after 1949. It is not known whether the archive was packed and listed in December 1949 as it was necessary to transfer the resource to the ŻIH collection or to some other archive within Poland, or perhaps the option of exporting the documentation abroad (in whole or in part) was taken into account. ŻIH took over the Joint archive certainly later than December 1949. After that, a preliminary description of the archive was drawn up; however perfunctory, it took note of the missing personal files of employees and Emigration Department records. The AJDC staff’s dossier could possibly have aroused the interest of the Security Office (UB) and been taken over by this communist secret police. The operation of the Emigration Department was suspended in early 1949; the office room was sealed and the Joint team were denied the right to use the resources stored there.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
AJDC was formed in 1914 in the United States on the initiative of Jewish charity organisations, with a view to aiding the Jewish people in Palestine as well as in east-central Europe, then affected by pogroms and warfare, and in Turkey. After the outbreak of World War II, the Joint financially and materially supported the Jewish population, officially until the US entering the war, and unofficially also afterwards. After the war, AJDC was reactivated in Poland on 19 July 1945.
This was mainly due to the initiative of Dawid Guzik, a director with AJDC in the interwar and Nazi occupation period, whose particular skill was organising aid and assistance to the Jewish people during the war. He was appointed the first director of the Warsaw headquarters and was succeeded after his death in a plane crash by William Bein. Józef Gitler-Barski was secretary general at Warsaw.
The Polish outpost gradually developed, with 20 staff in October 1945, 80 in March 1946 and some 130 in December 1947. The organisation’s major task was provision of material aid. Foodstuffs, medicines, clothes, raw materials, pieces of machinery, and other commodities were obtained by the Joint by way of foreign donation or direct purchase abroad or at home; the organisation subsequently mediated in their distribution. The Joint was allowed to operate till the end of 1949.
Poland’s AJDC focused its material and financial assistance on social, political, educational and cultural organisations and societies dealing with productivisation of Jewish people, as well as on religious associations. Along with supplies of food, clothes and other goods, funds were provided in the form of permanent subsidies or ad-hoc assistance. Major beneficiaries included the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP) including the Central Jewish Historical Commission (CŻKH), the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population in Poland (TOZ), the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labour (ORT) and various cooperatives. Landsmanshaft associations and Hebrew schools were a separate sector of AJDC’s interest. Some religious congregations, where Jewish children were kept in hiding during the war, received assistance; support was offered also to individual Poles who hid Jews during the Nazi occupation.
- Access points: locations:
- Gdynia
- Jerusalem
- New York City
- Paris
- Warsaw
- Finding aids:
-
A catalogue in Polish is accessible online.
It includes an index of personal names.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute
- Author of the description:
- Agnieszka Reszka; Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. E. Ringelbluma; 2015
