WJR on ‘mission’ to connect Jewish refugee history with descendants - The Jewish Chronicle

More than 200 metres of shelf space holding British Jewish history, including information about Jewish refugees who arrived in the UK throughout the Second World War, is waiting to be connected to descendants.

The archive collection, which this year marks 10 years since being digitised, is located within The London Archives, which, until last year, was known as the London Metropolitan Archives, the largest county record offices in the United Kingdom.

A total of 64 collections from the Anglo-Jewish community have been deposited over hundreds of years, including records of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Office of the Chief Rabbi, the Jewish Free School (JFS), the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS), United Synagogue, Liberal Judaism and more.

Also kept within the labyrinth of humidity and temperature-controlled rooms is the meticulously recorded details of the approximately 65,000 Jewish refugees, predominantly from Germany and Austria, whom World Jewish Relief (WJR), then known as the Central British Fund, assisted in bringing to the UK between 1933 and 1946.

Now, WJR is on a “mission” to connect these records with the descendants of the refugees and is appealing to the public to get in touch.

The records come in a multitude of forms, from welfare updates, photographs, immigration registration slips and school reports to wedding information, employment documents, medical assistance and more.

WJR’s archive team, comprising seven volunteers, receives approximately 30 requests a month to dig up records, and each case varies in complexity. Over the last 10 years, since most of the records were digitised in 2015, the team has helped to connect some 8,000 documents to descendants.

Just last month, the archive team was able to unearth the arrival registration slip of Eva Behar (née Herskovitz), survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and the late grandmother of Rachel Geron, who joined WJR eight months ago as head of marketing.

Rachel said: “It was very moving to see this incredible piece of history, which I was seeing for the first time. It felt full circle for me, seeing that, and working for this amazing organisation that so values these documents, each one of which carries its own individual story.”

Paul Anticoni introduces the WJR archives to a visiting delegation from the USAWJR

The minimum information required for the archive team to begin the search for a case file is a surname and place and date of birth.

Chief executive of WJR, Paul Anticoni, said of the ongoing appeal: “The archive is a treasure trove of documents detailing the assistance we provided to the Kindertransport children, men in the Kitchener camp, The Boys and many other Jews fleeing persecution who came to the UK.

“If you know of anybody that arrived here between 1933 and 1946 through the Central British Fund, it’s highly likely that we might have a record of theirs. We feel an absolute responsibility to reunite those files with those family members. It is becoming a mission of this organisation.”

The archive is one of several focuses of WJR today, which also responds to humanitarian crises and natural disasters around the world, from the Ukraine war to the 2021 earthquake in Haiti.

For more information and to see if WJR is holding your family’s archives, click here

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World Jewish Relief