Jewish Labor Committee records

The Jewish Labor Committee, an umbrella group of Jewish trade unions and fraternal organizations, was founded in 1934 for the purpose of organizing opposition to Fascism, providing assistance to its victims, and fighting all forms of bigotry. It maintained close contact with European resistance movements and was able to effect the rescue of several thousand labor and socialist activists and their families. After World War II the Committee continued its program of relief to Holocaust victims. It cooperated with other Jewish agencies in reuniting families and organized a Child Adoption program for destitute children. The Committee contributed to the reconstruction of Jewish culture after 1945 by financing Yiddish libraries, schools, and publications in North and South America, Europe, and Israel.

Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Survivors Registry acquired the collection from the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in 1994. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the collection by transfer in 1995. Four series of records selected for microfilming represent only the earliest portion of the Jewish Labor Committee collection at the Wagner F. Labor Archives, New York University Library, and have been microfilmed in two parts. One part covers the period 1934-1947 and the other 1948-1956. The full collection, totaling some 800 linear feet, covers the activities of the Committee from its founding to the late 1970s. It includes, in addition to the Holocaust-period material, records of the campaigns for trade-union rights in America and abroad and campaigns against antisemitism and other forms of racial and religious discrimination. The accretion of three microfilm reels added in July 2019.