Американская объединенная восстановительная организация. Управление делами
- American Joint Reconstruction Foundation
- Amerikanskaia ob"edinennaia vosstanovitelnaia organizatsiia. Upravlenie delami
Extent and Medium
1305 files
Biographical History
The American Joint Reconstruction Foundation was established in 1924 by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA). The organization was created primarily to improve the economic situation of Eastern European Jewish victims of the First World War by developing cooperative credit, and supporting Jewish agricultural colonies, trade schools, and related initiatives. In 1936, the Reconstruction Foundation supported 672 loan funds (kassas) with 200,000 members, the majority of them small craftsmen and merchants. Starting in 1933, it helped sponsor Jewish refugees from Germany, including their settlement in Palestine. The American Joint Reconstruction Foundation was headed by an administrative council made up of representatives of the JDC, the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), and Jewish organizations of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The Reconstruction Foundation's day-to-day operations were managed by an administrative department located, until 1933, in Berlin; thereafter, in Paris. Its directors were Bernhard Kahn representing the JDC and, on behalf of the JCA, Louis Oungre. Upon the advance of Nazi troops in 1940, the administrative department was evacuated from Paris to Bordeaux. Before the Second World War, branch offices of the American Joint Reconstruction Foundation were in operation in many countries of Europe and South America.
Archival History
Scope and Content
The collection's contents are catalogued in three inventories. Each of these contains three sections: secretariat documents, documents of the finance department, and printed materials. The collection contains the JDC charter of 1924; the JDC's assignment of legal rights to the newly created American Joint Reconstruction Foundation; listings of transferred bonds, promissory notes, bills of exchange, and other securities (1924); and accounts of the Reconstruction Foundation's activities for 1924-26 and 1937-39. The collection also contains correspondence of JDC administrative council members with branches of Jewish social organizations and banks on allocating credit among Jewish savings and loan associations of Eastern Europe; on drawing up guidelines for Jewish pawnshops; on auditing the work of Jewish banks in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania; on merging and liquidating banks, and carrying out financial audits; on bank account operations; on setting up Jewish credit cooperatives in Latin America; and on the situation of European Jewish émigrés in Shanghai; with the administration of Keren Hayesod on credit and currency operations in the financing of Jewish immigration to Palestine; and with the Polish section of the JDC on the liquidation of the Warsaw Cooperative Bank. The collection also has printed materials: instructions to Foundation inspectors on rules for auditing loan kassas (1933, 1934); issues of the journal Poradnik Spółdzielni (Poland) for 1933-36 and 1939; Wiadomości statystyczne for 1935-38; Folkshilf (Poland, in Yiddish) for 1933-38; Der Deutscher Economist (Germany) for 1933-35; Cuvant Cooperativist (Romania) for 1934-36; and issues of the JDC informational bulletin for 1937.
Finding Aids
Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow. A guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive, ed. by D. E. Fishman, M. Kupovetsky, V. Kuzelenkov, Scranton - London 2010
Archivist Note
Entry selected by Krzysztof Tyszka from the book “Nazi-Looted Jewish Archives in Moscow. A guide to Jewish Historical and Cultural Collections in the Russian State Military Archive”, ed. by D. E. Fishman, M. Kupovetsky, V. Kuzelenkov
Rules and Conventions
EHRI Guidelines for Description v.1.0