Jewish Council for Amsterdam

Jewish Council for Amsterdam 

Jewish Council for Amsterdam 

The archive consists of correspondence, newsletters and financial documents from the chairmen of the Jewish Council and various departments and bureaus. The documents give insight into German policy and the fate of individual Jews. 

During its two and a half year existence, the Jewish Council changed constantly. It is therefore not possible to make an all encompassing organisation chart. The Guide of the Jewish Council for Amsterdam was therefore chosen as a base for the classification of the archive. This depicts the organisation mid March 1943. The classification of the archive mimics this situation. The archive consists of five parts. The organisation structure is mirrored closely in the four rubrics"chairme","department","committee", and"national bureau". Internally these rubrics are ordered like the Guide for the Jewish Councils for Amsterdam. In the final rubric, documents about specific topics were gathered. During the first classification in 1986 the method was justified as follows: It should be noted that for the sake of convenience the classification done by the Jewish Council was kept, for instance the alphabetical order of correspondence, the order of street names where offices were situated, and within some large folders where reversed chronological order was used (the last document is on top); these are deviations from the Institutional guidelines. Furthermore, it should be noted that in the text of this inventory and the lists of content the Jewish Council for Amsterdam is simply referred to as Jewish Council. When it concerns council departments from other places it will be mentioned separately.