Records of the Stockholm Office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization. The JDC was founded in 1914 to assist Jewish persons in Palestine during World War I. The Holocaust and World War II caused the JDC to ramp up its relief efforts. With the end of the war in 1945, Jewish survivors were placed into hastily created displaced persons camps throughout Europe. Along with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the JDC helped administer these camps and provide supplies. The JDC has aided millions of Jews in more than 85 countries. 

Records of the Stockholm Office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 

14 microfilm reels, 35 mm 

Records of AJJDC’s Stockholm office during the years 1941-1967. The majority of the materials focus on the Stockholm office’s activities during World War II and in the postwar period from 1944-1949. Included are records of the AJJDC’s collaborations with other organizations to assist survivors, such as its work with the Red Cross on the White Buses. This project, headed by Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat and then-president of the Swedish Red Cross, provided packages and medical care to survivors in concentration camps, as well as bringing concentration camp inmates to safety in Sweden during the last months of the war. AJJDC also cooperated with the local Swedish Jewish community, the Mosaiska Församlingen to assist Holocaust survivors who had arrived in Sweden from Denmark, Norway, Hungary, and concentration camps. After the war, AJJDC representatives in Stockholm arranged for shipments of supplies distributed by AJJDC offices to survivors in Germany, Poland and Austria. These were referred to as the"Felix Convoy", coordinated by Mrs. Kerstin Felix. AJJDC also provided care and maintenance for refugees with tuberculosis and other diseases who were sent to sanatoria in Sweden to recuperate. In addition, the Stockholm office also corresponded with Jewish communities in South America and South Africa who sought to send money and other aid to survivors, and with other Jewish communities requesting assistance, such as the Jewish community in Prague. 

Copyright Holder: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 

Arranged in six series: 1. Financial records, 1941, 1944-1946, 1958; 2. Correspondence, 1944-1947; 3. Memorandums to staff, 1946-1949; 4. Marcus Levin file, 1942-1943; 5. AJJDC’s Stockholm office- miscellaneous files, 1945-1947; 6. Miscellaneous correspondence with Swedish humanitarian organizations and other international organizations, 1958-1966 (mostly organized in alphabetical order). The records in this collection have been digitized and are searchable online through the textual collections portal of the AJJDC Archives database.