Jewish Relief Unit: Former members' collections

Papers of former members of the Jewish Relif Unit (JRU), 1945-1984. The bulk of the collections are from regular JRU volunteers and consist chiefly of copies of photographs and personal accounts. Notable collections include copies of the personal papers of Phyllis Gerson, the leader of the first Jewish Relief Unit sent to Egypt, Feb 1944, providing an account of the organisation and activities of the JRU units in Europe and original and contemporary copies of the papers of George Weis, former JRU legal adviser, documenting his involvement with post-war restitution claims, liaison between the JRU and the post-war occupying authorities and his efforts to resurrect the careers of Jewish lawyers in Germany who had survived the Holocaust.

The Jewish Relief Unit was the operational arm of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad which was formed in 1943 by the Joint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association and under the auspices and financial responsibility of the Central British Fund for Jewish Relief and Rehabilitation.

The collections have been arranged alphabetically according to the name of the JRU volunteer. The papers have been arranged chronologically within each collection.

Open

Various

Description exists to this archive on the Wiener Library's online catalogue www.wienerlibrary.co.uk

Copies can be made for personal use. Permission must be sought for publication.

The deposits were received by the Wiener Library mostly in 1984 as a result of an appeal made at a reunion of former JRU workers in October 1983.