United States. Displaced Persons Commission

This collection contains correspondence, brochures, memorandum, pamphlets, fliers, invitations, reports, programs and press releases. The documents in this collection describe issues concerning the Holocaust, Jewish resistance, European labor concerns, the Jewish Labor Movement in America and anti-communism and Soviet Jewry. Included are invitations, programs and general information concerning miscellaneous concerts, conventions, symposia, and summer fellowships. A brochure regarding the Jewish Labor Committee's Child Adoption Program and materials relating to the Women's Division and Workmen's Circle also are found in the collection. In addition the collection contains publications issued by other organizations, including: American Federation of Labor, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Friends of Democracy, National Community Relations Advisory Council, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and the United States Displaced Persons Commission.

This collection contains correspondence, records, and publications of the United Service for New Americans (USNA), the major immigration and resettlement organization in the United States for Jewish displaced persons immigrating in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These records document USNA’s interaction and coordination with the United States government’s Displaced Persons Commission, associated Jewish agencies, particularly the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and representatives of Jewish settlement groups in cities and towns across the country. The organization helped obtain housing and job assurances for Jewish refugees without family in the United States and provided assurances that they would not become public charges. The correspondence and records in this collection document the entire process of immigration and resettlement, including obtaining the necessary assurances required for displaced persons to immigrate to the United States, relief services provided immediately upon the refugees’ arrival, their designation to and arrival in communities across the country, and the services provided to the new immigrants by their local Jewish communities thereafter.