Records of the Istanbul Office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1937-1949

Records include: correspondence with Jewish communities throughout Turkey, Romania, and Palestine; extensive documentation regarding shipments of food packages and other supplies to concentration camps such as Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen (including a postcard sent by Rabbi Leo Baeck, the renowned German scholar, from Theresienstadt acknowledging receipt of a AJJDC care package); cables and news releases; lists of survivors, including thousands of files from the Central Location Index; wartime testimonies; and correspondence regarding Joel Brand’s and Rudolf Kasztner’s negotiations in 1944 with Nazi officials in an attempt to save Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz. This collection also contains documentation on AJJDC's extensive support for refugees passing through Turkey en route to Palestine and to passengers on the SS Drottningholm, a rescue ship used for repatriation of civilians and prisoners of war; and eyewitness accounts, including an account of the sinking of the SS Mefkure, a rescue ship traveling from Romania to Palestine, by torpedoes in the Black Sea on August 5, 1944.

Arranged in four series: 1. Administration; 2. Organizations; 3. Subject Matters; 4. Countries and Regions. The records in this collection have been digitized and are searchable online through the textual collections portal of the AJJDC Archives database.