A digital view of the past

FOR many people, there were no remnants of the Holocaust. Until survivors began their new lives in their new homes, personal photographs and documentation just did not exist. Until now.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) – known to many Holocaust survivors as the Joint – has just digitised its archives, making them accessible to families the world over.
This is likely to be of particular interest to Jewish amateur genealogists in Australia, with many families brought to this country from European displaced persons camps by the JDC.

Sydneysider Tom Fleming was one of those Australians. Born in then-Czechoslovakia to a wealthy family, Fleming was incarcerated in Theresienstadt together with his family. He and his brother, who was born in the camp, survived, but 80 per cent of his family did not.

After the Holocaust, they returned to their family home, but when Communism came in 1948 they realised it was time to leave. Bribing their bank manager they managed to get out with some money, but it was help they needed most.

“We got to Rome and got in touch with the Joint,” he said. “They helped us get on a plane and that was the only plane they organised.”

That was the last involvement Fleming had with the JDC, until just recently when a local representative contacted him.

As she was leaving, the representative handed Fleming a JDC newsletter. “I got all goofy because there was my grandmother and grandfather,” he said.

The newsletter contained unidentified photos from JDC’s archives and with the help of Fleming, names were put to some of the faces.

Interactivity like this, said JDC spokesperson Michael Geller, is one of the aims of the archive.

“The entire point of this is a dialogue,” he said, adding that when people find themselves in photos or documents they are encouraged to get in touch with the JDC. Any additional information provided by survivors and their families will be added to the archives for future researchers.

“There are holes in our history,” he said.

The project, called Shared Legacy, has taken two years to put together and is part of a larger process for the JDC to digitise all its archives from its establishment in 1914.

“It was decided to fast-track the Holocaust-era portion of the archive, given that time is slipping away.”

Enquiries: www.jdc.org/sharedlegacy.

NAOMI LEVIN

Image: The photo Tom Fleming found his grandmother and grandfather in (bottom).