Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society

The Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) was formed in New York in 1909, as the result of a fusion of two Jewish relief organisations, the Hebrew Sheltering House Association (Hachnosas Orchim in Hebrew) and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (1902). These organisations, founded by Eastern-European Jews, had been providing food, clothing, shelter, financial, legal and other aid to newly arrived emigrants (mainly from Czarist Russia) since the closing decades of the 19th century. HIAS also lobbied for less restrictive immigration laws and quota. HIAS quickly grew from a local organisation to a national operation, active in the entire United States. Present mainly in the USA before 1915, HIAS extended its range of activities to Europe and the Far East. Branches were opened in Poland, Rumania, Latvia, Lithuania, Danzig, Turkey and France at the beginning of the 1920s, with the goal of aiding the victims of pogroms and the violent aftermath of the First World War. In 1927, HIAS combined forces with the Jewish Colonization Association (based in London) and the (German) Emigdirect to form HIAS-ICA Emigration Association (HICEM). The former HIAS, JCA and Emigdirect branches all over Europe, South America, Turkey, China … became HIAS-sections. Initially established to cope with the increased demand for aid and assistance to Jewish communities due to the Great Depression, HICEM (run collectively by the three organisations) mainly financed and assisted emigration from Nazi Germany to Western Europe and the Americas. A Belgian branch (BELHICEM) managed by Vladimir Shah was set up in Brussels in October 1939, to maintain relations with Jewish agencies in greater Germany and the Czech Protectorate, with refugee committees in neutral countries and with HICEM headquarters in Paris. HICEM, led by the Belgian Max Gottschalk, worked until 1945 to rescue as many Jews as possible from annihilation by the Nazi regime. HIAS withdrew from the HICEM partnership in 1945; its Belgian office was reopened the same year. In 1949, HIAS and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) formed the Displaced Persons Coordinating Committee. In 1954 HIAS, the migration department of the JDC and the United Service for New Americans merged and established the United HIAS Service (UHS), a worldwide Jewish migration agency providing support to migrants in all phases of migration: transportation, legal aid, (re)settlement, vocational training, education, … During the second half of the 20th century, UHS helped Jewish refugees from i.a. Hungary, North Africa, Cuba and the USSR. The organisation continues its work today, assisting both Jewish and non-Jewish refugees and immigrants from all over the world.