us
type: Country
archival history: The United States of America were neutral during the first two years of the Second World War. They were brought into the conflict by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and became one of the decisive belligerent nations, defeating Japan in the Pacific and heavily contributing to the war effort against the Axis powers, e.g. during the Allied landings in North Africa, Italy and France. American forces invaded German territory early in 1945. On the eve of the Second World War, the United States had a total population of about 132,165,000 inhabitants. About 4.8 million were Jewish, with approximately a quarter of them in New York City. Even though the United States had imposed serious restrictions on immigration during the economic crisis of the interwar period, more than 200,000 Jews found refuge there between 1933 and 1945. Most of them reached America before the end of 1941. In January 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board, which was committed to enforcing US policy regarding rescue and relief of victims of persecution. This included the establishment of safe havens, evacuation of endangered people from Nazi-occupied territories, and delivery of relief supplies to concentration camps. The War Refugee Board worked with Jewish organisations, diplomats from neutral countries, and resistance groups in Europe to rescue Jews from occupied territories and provide relief to inmates of Nazi concentration camps. US forces liberated many camps, among them Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Flossenbürg, Dachau, and Mauthausen. For this country there are no sufficient findings on the history of Roma during the Second World War. EHRI would be pleased to receive any information.
archival situation: The repository for the records of the Federal Government of the United States, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), created in 1934, became an independent government agency in 1985. In addition to the National Archives, there are many other official and independent archival institutions in the United States, including the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM); the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC); the Center for Jewish History; the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives; the Simon Wiesenthal Center Library and Archives; the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives; and a number of universities and colleges. For more information on these various institutions, see below.
research extensive: Disclaimer: The EHRI Extensive Report was updated in 2024. **A. EHRI approach to the United States of America: Pre-existing research, available archival guides, expert support** Due to EHRI’s core mission to focus on European countries first and foremost, archives in the United States were not covered in an extensive fashion. Because of its crucial importance for Holocaust archives and research, however, EHRI made an exception for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The holdings of the USHMM are to some extent reflected in the EHRI portal. Equally, some other archives which could be integrated via case studies on other countries, have been partially integrated. Of key importance to EHRI’s identification work were the Directory of Holocaust-Related Archives and the overview of restitution and compensation institutions, both compiled and provided by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (“Claims Conference”). **B. Characteristics of the United States of America’s archival system and specific challenges** During the Clinton administration it was decided to open and catalogue all Nazi-related administrative files in US agencies. The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) (https://www.archives.gov/iwg) locates, identifies, inventories, and recommends for declassification, currently classified U.S. records relating to Nazi and Japanese Imperial Government war crimes. Once declassified, these records are released to the American public. The group, consisting of high-level representatives from federal agencies and members of the public, was established by the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act. Since 1999, the IWG has declassified and opened to the public an estimated 8 million pages of documents, including 1.2 million pages of OSS records; 74,000 pages of CIA name and subject files; more than 350,000 pages of FBI subject files; and nearly 300,000 pa…
research summary: While EHRI has focused its data integration efforts first and foremost on countries that were Axis- and Nazi-occupied during the Second World War, vast amounts of Holocaust-relevant materials were also identified in the United States. Merging information from existing overviews, EHRI provides information on over 80 repositories located throughout the United States. At the national level, NARA holds several Holocaust-related collections and launched one of the largest online Interactive Holocaust Collection databases in 2009. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., is a key institution in the field of Holocaust research and possesses an enormous collection which, like Yad Vashem, includes unique private collections. Given the importance and breadth of its holdings, it was crucial to integrate information on USHMM’s collection descriptions into the EHRI Portal’. USHMM provided an export of its collection, document, object, oral history, film, video, and recorded sound and publications descriptions that have been integrated into the portal. In the process, EHRI identified an important research tool, the “Collections Search” (collections.ushmm.org), which also includes descriptions of all holdings, Library and Special Collections, of the USHMM’s “David M. Rubenstein National Institute of Holocaust Documentation.” To the extent permitted by terms of deposit or by law, digitized images are linked to the catalog records. Many Holocaust-relevant institutions are clustered around New York City, such as the archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC), which also has an archive in Jerusalem; the Center for Jewish History, which holds important collections on Jewish life in Europe before, during and after the Second World War; and the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives which include the “Jewish Labor Committee Records”. Other Holocaust-relevant institutions include the Simon Wiesenthal Center Library and A…
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