Accession includes an undated document describing immigration prospects following the Second World War and the anti-immigration sentiment. The document was published by an unknown group "interested in combating race-hatred and anti-Semitism and on strengthening the unity between the groups which make up the people of Canada". In addition, there is a copy of a confidential letter dated February 14, 1951 listing immigrants identified as skilled workers and selected by overseas Canadian immigration officials under the auspices of the Settlement Branch to settle in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. These immigrants were to arrive in Halifax on the above noted date of on board the SS Staveangerfgord.
Custodial History
File discovered while processing CJC fonds 17.
Use Conditions
Closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA Director prior to accessing the records.
This file consists of a document outlining the structure and programme of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Canada, a report on the Annual Meeting and Workshop of United HIAS services held in New York and a report of the Case Committee. Included in the Case Committee report are examples of specific cases and a statistical report of immigrant assistance with a focus on Hungarian, North African and Polish/other immigrants.
Accession consists of a report from JIAS Housing Committee written by Jack Shindman and a letter from M. Kraisner of HIAS Hanover, Germany to Jack Shindman concerning an immigrant family.
Accession includes twenty-nine photographs, most from the 1984 and 1985 Toronto Region Annual Meetings. Many are images of awards being given to outgoing and incoming presidents, and of speakers, with some group table shots.
Textual records include Toronto JIAS information and brochures, a history of the organization, meeting programs and invitations, a list of the 1969 board of directors, and a 1974 report "JIAS Background Information" by Joseph Kage. In addition there is a publicity brochure for Montreal and minutes of a JIAS-UJRA meeting in Montreal in 1975.
This file consists images taken at a general meeting of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, held at the Zionist building at 788 Marlee Ave. The images depict three speakers at the podium, and a photograph of the crowd seated in front of the executive table.
Repro Restriction
Copyright is held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. Please contact the archives to obtain permission prior to use.
The records consist of materials documenting the programs and social services administered by JIAS Toronto, predominantly from the 1960s through the 1990s. The records include reports and essays, case files, statistics reports, staff manuals and other resources, budget documents, minutes of meetings, resources JIAS produced for immigrants and resources from JIAS's education programs. Much of the material from the 1980s and 1990s deals with integration, particularly of Soviet Jews. There are records relating to the Integration Committee, the provision of "direct relief aid" and other services to clients, and research and analytical reports.
The earlier case files from 1935 and 1948-1981 concern reimbursement for immigrants' transportation costs. Later case files contain only one sheet, a case report, which includes personal and immigration information, occupation, remarks, sponsor’s information and an employment history. Some files also have: identification cards from United HIAS Service with sailing information; summary of assistance forms kept by JIAS case workers; and other administrative paperwork.
Use Conditions
Partially closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA Director prior to accessing some of the records.
This file consists of an agenda from a dinner meeting for the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Canada, January 22, 1958. Also included is a report of the Nominations Committee for 1958.
Accession consists of a report prepared by JIAS Canada detailing the situation of recent immigrant arrivals to various small communities in Ontario. The communities discussed are Cambridge, Hamilton, Kitchener, London, Ottawa, St. Catharines and Windsor.
Custodial History
The custodial history for this item is unknown. The accession number has been assigned by the assistant archivist.
319 photographs : b&w and col. ; 21 x 26 cm or smaller
Admin History/Bio
The Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada was established in 1920 by the newly-formed Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). A Toronto branch was established in a storefront office on Spadina Avenue, but the organization was rudimentary. As the enthusiasm that spurred the founding of CJC died out, JIAS soon faltered. Then in 1922 it was taken over and reactivated under the cooperative support of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of Toronto, B'nai B'rith, and the Council of Jewish Women. JIAS was legally incorporated on 30 August 1922. It also operated under the moniker of the Emergency Jewish Immigrant Aid Committee, and it changed its name to Jewish Immigrant Aid Services in 1954.
Charged with organizing emergency relief for European Jews in distress, JIAS became the central agency of the Jewish community to facilitate the lawful entry of Jewish immigrants into Canada, and provided them with welfare services, transportation, and assistance with accommodation and employment after their arrival. In addition, JIAS offered consultation services for sponsors of potential immigrants, ran a competitive foreign remittance service, and campaigned to counter the activities of unscrupulous steamboat agents, lawyers, and influence peddlers, or “shtadlanim,” who often victimized immigrants and sponsors alike.
In conjunction with similar efforts by the CJC, JIAS was also actively engaged in negotiating for the increased admission of Jewish immigrants to Canada. In 1923, the federal government instituted a permit-based immigration program and JIAS competed with travel agents and solicitors in the private sector for these limited quota permits. After combating the anti-immigration policies of the Depression era, the outbreak of war in 1939 virtually closed the already limited avenues for immigration.
JIAS Canada was organized into a national office in Montreal and regional offices in Winnipeg (Western Region), Toronto (Central Region), and Halifax (Eastern Region). The Central Region covered Ontario, and established a full-time head office in 1935 at 399 Spadina Avenue in Toronto (hence the Central Region was sometimes called simply the Toronto Office). The office later moved to 265 Spadina Avenue. JIAS Toronto’s board of directors met on a regular basis at different locations in Toronto, including 206 Beverley Street and in the Talmud Torah building at 9 Brunswick Avenue. The first JIAS Toronto board included notable Toronto residents such as Henry Dworkin, Mrs. Draiman, Mr. Kronick, Dr. Brodey and Mrs. Willinsky. The role of the board was to oversee the operations of the Central Region. It rendered decisions on issues relating to finances, procedures and policies, negotiations with the federal Immigration Branch, as well as individual cases that required their attention.
General meetings of the Central Region membership were held annually. The 1943 JIAS constitution states that regional annual meetings were to be held for “receiving and considering reports,” holding nominations and elections for the executive, and discussing JIAS’s program and policies.
In the post-war era, JIAS shifted its focus to renewed efforts on behalf of individual claimants and community support, while the focus for lobbying for a reversal of Canada's immigration policy fell increasingly under the jurisdiction of the CJC. A boom in immigration between 1947 and 1952 saw the arrival of large numbers of Jewish immigrants to all parts of Canada and the Toronto Office of JIAS renewed its efforts to meet the needs of this new influx. Major world events also sparked other waves of immigration from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, North Africa, and Russia, to which JIAS responded in turn. JIAS worked in conjunction with other immigrant aid societies such as HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, in the United States, to facilitate immigration to the United States, and later to Israel, where many of the immigrants and refugees coming to Canada had family and ultimately settled.
Custodial History
Custody of these records was transferred to the Ontario Jewish Archives by JIAS in 1983, as preparations were under way for the move to a new facility in North York. Much of the material was in four-cubic-foot boxes and in file cabinets.
The accession was divided into three sections: files which were at the JIAS office and had been retained in their original order; files which had been retrieved from a flood in the basement of 152 Beverley St. and consequently had been thrown into dry boxes without regard to order; files discovered in the furnace rooms at 150 and 152 Beverley St., intact but covered in coal dust. The bulk of the records were stored off-site, with dirty files being isolated from the rest.
The dust-covered materials were cleaned at an off-site location, placed in temporary boxes and transferred to the Archives and restored, as far as was possible, to their original order.
Clips were removed and replaced as appropriate with archivally acceptable ones. All materials were transferred to acid-free folders and boxes.
Scope and Content
Fonds contains the records of the Toronto Office (Central region) of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Canada. The fonds consists primarily of textual records: minutes, correspondence, financial records, reports, immigration files, naturalization case files, social service case files and the records of attempts to trace missing individuals. There are also photographs of special events, speakers and arriving immigrants.
The fonds represents an important resource for the study of Canadian Jewry, especially when taken in conjunction with the JIAS National Office records at the Canadian Jewish Congress National Archives in Montreal, and those of the Western Office at the Library and Archives of Canada. It documents the means by which a particular Canadian ethnic community has dealt with the problems of rescue, settlement and government relations. These records also offer insight into the relationship between the Toronto Office and the other branches of JIAS, and invite comparison with similar agencies in the United States, as well as those of other ethnic groups in Canada.
The material collected includes information about the countries of origin, transportation routes, settlement and employment patterns of Jewish immigrants to Canada in the twentieth century. The documents also touch upon important related issues such as advocacy, sponsorship, admission processes, health and social problems.
These records cover several waves of immigration following the Second World War: Holocaust survivors in the late 1940s, Sephardic (North African) and Hungarian Jews in the 1950s, Russian and Czechoslovakian Jews in the 1960s, and additional Russians in the 1970s.
The records also contain significant information for those researchers looking to conduct genealogical research into Jewish immigrants and their descendents.
The fonds has been arranged with one sous-fonds, which contains the records of the National JIAS office in Montreal. In total there are 17 series. The Toronto office (main fonds) series are: 1. Board of Directors and Executive Committee Minutes; 2. Annual meeting proceedings; 3. Reports; 4. Legal ; 5. Administration; 6. JIAS Committees; 7. External committees; 8. Financial ; 9. Arrivals; 10. Immigration case files; 11. Social service assistance case files; 12. Photographs; 13. Miscellaneous. The National Office sous-fonds is divided into the following series: 1. National executive meeting minutes; 2. National annual meeting proceedings; 3. National annual reports; 4. Publications; and Photographs.
Notes
Physical description note: Physical extent is based on fully processed records. Additional accessions are not included (see Related Material note below).
Associated material note: The CJC National Archive, in Montreal, has additional JIAS records from 1920-1989 including 275 m of textual records and graphic materials (3250 photos): collection number I0037; alpha-numeric designation MA 4. The National Archives of Canada, Manitoba branch, in Winnipeg, has Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada JIAS textual records from 1923-1950 on 18 microfilm reels: Former archival reference number MG28-V114 (no replacement listed). The originals of these records are maintained by the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada.
Name Access
Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Toronto
Subjects
Immigrants--Canada
Nonprofit organizations
Access Restriction
Records in off-site storage; advance notice required to view.
Partially closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA director prior to accessing some of the records.
Related Material
Other OJA records relating to JIAS may be found in the following accessions: 1979-9-5; 1988-5-2; 1991-10-5; 2006-3-11.
Accession consists of one booklet for the annual meeting of the Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Canada, Central Region held at Temple Sinai with guest speaker Mr. Gaynor Jacobson, executive vice-president of HIAS.
Accession consists of material related to the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society (JIAS) of Canada. Records include campaign promotional material, national convention programmes and invitations, national activity reports and Central Region meeting invitations.
This file consists of communication from the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada. Included are reports and updates, meeting minutes, notice of meetings and a letter with New Year greeting from JIAS president (September 1941).
This file consists of communication from the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada. Included are: a programme from 1948 National Convention, JIAS newsletter (January 1948), a statistical report on central region (1953), a copy of the publication JIAS Record from Montreal (1949), 2 letters in Yiddish from JIAS of Canada regarding Polish Jews.
The Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada (JIAS) was established in 1922 to assist Jewish refugees coming to Canada. As the exclusive Jewish social service agency dedicated to settlement services, it has aided immigrants and refugees from various regions, including postwar Europe, North Africa, the former Soviet Union, South Africa, Syria, the former Yugoslavia, Argentina, and Israel. In a milestone move in 2015, JIAS Toronto became a Sponsorship Agreement Holder (SAH), empowering the organization to sponsor refugees and facilitate their arrival in Canada. Throughout its history, JIAS has been instrumental in providing essential support and fostering the successful settlement of Jewish immigrants in the country.
Scope and Content
Sub-series consists of correspondence from the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society of Canada regarding assistance for Regina Nisenbaum, who resides in Bielsko, Poland, in locating her relatives.
Sub-series contains communication case files on immigrants and their sponsors, maintained by the Immigration and Location Service of UJRA. The files date from 1941 to 1951, but most were created in the years right after the war. The records document the interaction between social services agencies and sponsors in the process of locating missing relatives and facilitating the immigration to Canada of known relatives. Records include incoming and outgoing letters, memoranda and telegrams exchanged between the UJRA, sponsoring individuals in Ontario, and Jewish aid organizations such as: the American Joint Distribution Committee in its various European centres; the United Service for New Americans in the United States; the World Jewish Congress; and others. They reflect the administrative process of being a sponsor. Sponsors agreed to keep and support their relatives upon their arrival, but some letters reflect their reluctance, or inability, to provide any aid beyond that. For a short time in 1947, Displaced Persons were admitted regardless of their relationship to their sponsor, but beginning in September 1947, permits were limited to first-degree relatives only. Having employment lined up in Canada was only sufficient where special projects existed: for farmers, miners, lumbermen and D.P.s in camps in Germany and Austria.
Some thicker files document transactions over a period of time; some contain forms such as the letter of authorization granted by the American Joint Distribution Committee; and some letters outline the case history of immigrants, telling their story. The majority of files, however, have just one or two letters dealing with the common administrative activities of the UJRA: dealing with the entrance of relatives, in terms of asking an individual to be a sponsor, passing along messages from the Joint Distribution Committee overseas, or being a go-between to locate sponsors and give them information and instructions. Many letters pertain to the requirement that sponsors pay the travel expenses of their immigrating relatives, or pay for administrative fees for the application process. UJRA in Canada also helped the United Service for New Americans in New York City to locate refugees or those who moved to Canada after their arrival.
The files in this sub-subseries are arranged as they were by UJRA, in alphabetical order by sponsor surname.
Notes
This sub-series is composed of former RG 294, which was separated into case files and administrative files.
Access Restriction
Closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA director prior to accessing the records.
Aron Fridenthal (b.1904-d.1970) was born in Lipsk, Poland. He became a rabbi at eighteen and later married Fiega, the daughter of Rabbi Shmuel Gringlas. They had a son, Abraham.
He headed the Revisionist movement in Ostrowiec, promoting Zionist ideas. Aron also worked as an accountant at Prince Pnitowski’s flour station. After the Holocaust, he organized an effort to provide housing and support for the community, connecting with people from Ostrowiec worldwide. While living in Warsaw in the mid- to late-1940s, Aron set up a historical committee to collect materials for the purposes of preserving Ostrowiec’s history. He helped people immigrate to Palestine/Israel and, as the secretary of the Jewish Congregation in Poland, worked to save Jewish children who had been given to Polish families during the Holocaust. Aron also played a role in rescuing Torah scrolls and Jewish books to be sent to Israel.
In 1951, he immigrated to Israel, where he studied law in Tel Aviv and became licensed to practice in 1964. In 1967, Aron received the Medal of Merit for his Zionist activities.
Scope and Content
File consists of a copy of a letter from Aron Fridenthal, chairman of the District Committee of Ostrowiec to the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, dated 3 October 1945. In this letter, Aron provides details about several Ostrovzers and their whereabouts. File also contains a typed translation.
Repro Restriction
Copyright is held by the Ontario Jewish Archives. Please contact the archives to obtain permission prior to use.
File consists of a letter announcement of a meeting, to take place on August 8, 1920, to assist Jewish immigrants arriving in Canada in large numbers. Letter was written by committee members: M. Layevsky, S. Feldberg and Sol. Eisen.
Canadian Jewish Congress was involved in all aspects of immigration services. It facilitated the entry of immigrants into Canada, providing social assistance and finding employment for the new arrivals. It also assisted those immigrants who were filing restitution claims against Germany.
Scope and Content
Series consists of general files of Immigration.
Notes
Series formerly described and cited as RG259.
Access Restriction
Partially closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA Director prior to accessing some of the records
File consists of a booklet written by Rabbi Abraham L. Feinberg of Holy Blossom Temple, published by Canadian Welfare. Rabbi Feinberg summarizes the activities of Canadian Jewish Congress and the various projects it initiated to support Jewish-European orphan immigration to Canada before, during, and after the Second World War. Feinberg goes on to describe the continued support from organizations such as the Jewish Immigrant Aid Society (JIAS) and the YMHA to aid in the continued rehabilitation of these orphans through programs including night school, work projects, and activities.
Name Access
Canadian Jewish Congress
Jewish Immigrant Aid Services of Toronto (creator)
File consists of various records pertaining to JVS of which Lipa Green was a Board Director. Documents include notifications of meetings, an agenda, a newsletter, an information bulletin, a press cliping, a Vocational Rehabilitation Centre information book, budget data spreadsheet, and a speech written by Lipa Green while president of the board.