Records of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Landsmanshaftn Department

The majority of the collection consists of correspondence with some newspaper clippings, photographs, committee meeting minutes, bank reports and receipts from the interest-free loan associations and from individual donors, official documentation about immigration and displaced persons, and a few programs and invitations from various events held by the landsmanshaftn. The materials date from 1926 to 1950 with the bulk dating from 1937-1939 and 1945-1949. Over 800 communities and countries are represented. Most of the documents for an individual community are in a single folder, however some communities have several folders. The majority of the collection is in English and Yiddish, although various official documents are in Polish, German, Russian, Spanish, French, and Arabic on the documents from various governmental and JDC offices around the world. Folders 41, 43, 117, 155, 234, 246, 307, and 353 contain some information about the activities of TOZ, the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population in Poland, including some photographs.

Many of the towns have several different names and different ways of spelling these names, depending upon what language is used and what system of transliteration, if any, is used. Most town names are listed by their Polish name and spelling in the container lists, although some folders have information about landsmanshaftn using a transliterated spelling, such as folder 43, labeled Brzesc and containing information about the Brisker Relief Society. Alternate names and spellings are in parentheses following the town name. Some of the folders are labeled according to the name of the landsmanshaft, although they are represented by the town name in the container list, such as folder 824, listed as Satanow but labeled as Satanover Sisterhood Bronx, for Child Transportation to Palestine. Some folders of towns that were known by different names or were so small that former occupants were part of the landsmanshaft of the closest larger town contain only a cross-reference sheet, such as folder 241, Lubar, directing the researcher to folder 378, Rowne. When one landsmanshaft serves multiple towns, the town names are divided by slash marks, such as folder 14, Bendzin (Bedzin) / Sosnowiec, which contains information about the landsmanshaft that serves both Bedzin and Sosnowiec. The materials are arranged chronologically in each folder.