Industrial Removal Office (U.S.)

Collection contains correspondence relating to the committee's fund-raising efforts throughout the United States to aid survivors of the Russian pogroms, both in Russia, and in the United States, with particular focus on orphaned children. Contains information on the condition of the Jews in Russia and Roumania during and after the pogroms; on the relief and removal activities in Europe, in general, and Russia, in particular; on the self-defense movement and defense fund; immigration procedures and work of the Industrial Removal Office; and some financial and executive committee reports.

The officers of the Committee were Oscar Solomon Straus, chairman, Jacob Henry Schiff, treasurer, and Cyrus Leopold Suizberger, secretary.

The Papers of Max J. Kohler (1871-1934) document his life's work as lawyer, historian, writer, researcher, and defender of Jewish and immigrant rights. Correspondents include many of Kohler's contemporaries in the field of history and immigration law including Cyrus Adler; William Taft; John Bassett Moore; Mortimer Schiff; David Hunter Miller; Baron and Baroness de Hirsch; the Straus Family including Oscar Straus; Luigi Luzzatti; Leon Huhner; and Julian Mack. Subjects include U.S. immigration law, American-Jewish history, Col. Alfred Dreyfus, Haym Salomon, Ellis Island, Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler, the publication God in Freedom, international treaties, and the Peace Conference of 1919.

The Industrial Removal Office was created as part of the Jewish Agricultural Society to assimilate immigrants into American society, both economically and culturally. It worked to employ all Jewish immigrants. The collection contains administrative and financial records, immigrants' removal records, and correspondence. A database has been constructed to search for persons removed by the Industrial Removal Office.

The Galveston immigration records document the attempt of the Jewish Immigrant Information Bureau, working in cooperation with several other Jewish organizations, to receive Jewish immgrants through the port of Galveston, Texas rather than New York City. The papers further describe the JIIB's efforts to resettle the immigrants in communities throughout the United States. Papers include ship passenger lists, correspondence, and statistical reports, as well as papers dealing with individual immigration cases.