Three miles of documents, 150,000 photographs, 6,000 books, 3,600 audio and video recordings, and 1,000 artifacts…

Comprising more than a century of organizational records, the JDC Archives houses one of the world’s most significant collections for the study of modern Jewish history, with records of activity in more than 90 countries dating from 1914 to today. JDC shares these dynamic resources with general audiences in many ways, including partnering with public institutions like POLIN Museum of the History of the Polish Jews in Warsaw.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, POLIN Museum presented a temporary exhibition — “1945. Not the End, Not the Beginning” — that featured six items on loan from the JDC Archives. Helping to illustrate the difficult postwar reality of the 10 percent of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, the items showcased JDC’s crucial role in aiding them to restart their lives and build community amid devastation.

We could not imagine creating a story about the immediate postwar years in Poland without giving due place to the activities of The Joint during that period, without whose support and assistance the fate of the surviving Jews would have been even more difficult.”

Joanna Fikus

Head of Exhibitions Department, POLIN Museum

The two organizations have partnered before. A 2018 exhibition about a major antisemitic attack in 1968 included photographs of the Polish Jewish transmigrants we assisted in Vienna and Rome, and in 2019, the Archives co-sponsored a workshop at the museum exploring our role in helping the region’s Jewish communities survive the Cold War.

Additionally, to reach a global audience, JDC Archives and POLIN co-presented a webinar series in early 2025 that featured experts on various aspects of JDC’s 20th-century history in Poland centered on the topic of “American Jews Extending Their Hand to Brethren in Poland: The JDC in Poland, 1914-1950.”

“1945. Not the End, Not the Beginning” spotlights a seemingly simple photograph that shows boxes of humanitarian aid being transported to a Warsaw warehouse in 1946. This image, along with the accompanying description, tells the story of the nearly $7 million allocated by JDC that year alone — $115 million in today’s terms — to provide for Poland’s remaining Jews through cash assistance and support for hospitals, soup kitchens, orphanages, homes for the elderly, and more.

“Working in partnership with public-facing institutions is one of the many ways that we draw from our rich collections to help people around the globe learn about both the seismic events affecting the Jewish people since 1914 and the impact of these events on individual lives in the context of the work of JDC,” said Abby Lester, the organization’s Director of Global Archives. “One photo, document, or object can simultaneously personalize history and shed light on a much wider story.”

Recently, the Archives has also collaborated with the Brandeis University Initiative on the Jews of the Americas, the Latin American Jewish Studies Association, the Jewish Museum of Greece, and the Jewish Book Council.

Another JDC item in the POLIN exhibition cut to the heart in capturing the postwar experience of many survivors. A cablegram sent on July 14, 1945, from Luba Mizne in Warsaw to JDC’s New York office contains a simple, powerful message: “I Live. Require Help.”

Visitors to the POLIN Museum in Warsaw view a Chanukah menorah on loan from the JDC Archives.

“Since JDC is not only one of the world’s most important institutions but also one of the longest-established, we felt that there would certainly be objects in its collection directly related to the story we were telling,” said Joanna Fikus, who heads POLIN’s exhibitions department. “Being a history museum, we already know that the personal stories of individual people speak most clearly to visitors. Thanks to the excellent cooperation with the Archives’ staff, we looked for objects to illustrate them.”

One example was a very special Chanukah menorah produced in a JDC ceramics workshop in 1947 by liberated Jews for use among displaced persons (DPs). Today very rare, 351 were assembled in Marktredwitz, Germany, between June 1947 and September 1948. The manufacturing of ritual objects equipped Jewish DPs with new job skills and a fresh sense of purpose, while also effectively furnishing survivors with the religious materials they needed to lead an active Jewish life.

“It is precisely such objects that make history come alive and evoke emotions,” Fikus said. “Let the best proof of this be the fact that this exhibition was already visited by nearly 50,000 people in the first four months since its opening.”

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