In 2007, the JDC Archives initiated a digitization program to put its collections online and make them fully accessible to the public. Work began with the earliest collections from 1914, which had been cataloged and microfilmed, and continues today as previously unprocessed collections are cataloged. By the end of 2024, approximately 3.9 million pages of documents and 82,000 photographs had been digitized. A Names Indexing project, staffed by volunteers, has created a database of more than 700,000 names, directly searchable on the JDC Archives website; this feature has been of particular value to genealogists and family researchers. All of the JDC collections from its 1914 founding through the early post-World War II period (to 1954) have been digitized. This includes records from the New York office as well as the JDC European headquarters, located first in Paris and later in Geneva, and the records of JDC offices and operations in Stockholm, Istanbul, Cyprus, Warsaw, and Czechoslovakia. Later New York collections (1955-1989) and Geneva collections (1955-1964) are also available online.
Comprising the organizational records of JDC, the overseas rescue, relief, and rehabilitation arm of the American Jewish community, the archives includes over 3 miles of text documents, 120,000 photographs, 1,100 audio recordings (including oral histories of staff and lay leaders), 2,500 historical films and videos, and artifacts. As an institutional repository, the JDC Archives does not collect external materials.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
Founded during World War I, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was the first Jewish organization in the United States to dispense large-scale funding for international relief. World War I left in its wake the seeds of many additional catastrophes—pogroms, epidemics, famine, revolution, and economic ruin—and JDC played a major role in rebuilding the devastated communities of Eastern Europe and Palestine. JDC’s relief activities, emigration aid, and rescue operations were critical following the Nazi rise to power and the outbreak of World War II. After the war, JDC mobilized to support and resettle survivors, help reconstruct the remnant communities of Europe, create a network of social welfare services in the fledgling State of Israel, set up an extensive assistance program for Jews in North Africa and the Muslim world, and provide discreet relief behind the Iron Curtain. With the fall of Communism, JDC established cultural and educational programs to foster a sense of Jewish identify in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union and developed a broad welfare system for needy elderly and holocaust survivors. Active today in more than 70 countries, JDC and its partners work to alleviate hunger and hardship, rescue Jews in danger, create lasting connections to Jewish life, and help Israel overcome the social challenges of its most vulnerable citizens, both Jewish and non-Jewish. JDC’s reach extends beyond the global Jewish community by providing non-sectarian disaster relief and long-term development assistance worldwide.
ClaimsCon'06, YV, text quoted from: http://archives.jdc.org/ [The Joint](https://www.thejoint.org.il/en/) website
The JDC Archives is located in two centers, one at JDC’s NY headquarters and the second in Jerusalem, and is open to the public by appointment.
By appointment after completing an online request at https://request.archives.jdc.org.