Phase I of massive project will cover largest Russian wave, 1960s-2000s

New York City – HIAS, Inc., the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, has
begun a massive undertaking to digitally preserve millions of case
files in its archives. The campaign to raise funds for the first phase
of the project will be led by Genia Brin, a scientist working with NASA
who, along with her family, was resettled in the United States with the
assistance of HIAS.

The HIAS archives contain extensive records on immigration, arrival
and resettlement of clients, dating back to 1909. The organization
began operating in 1881. Since that time HIAS has helped more than 4.5
million people immigrate to and resettle in the United States.

The preservation project will assure that the contents of the
decaying paper documents in HIAS’ archives will be accessible for
generations to come. Phase I of the project will focus on preserving
the portion of the archives documenting the largest wave of Russian
Jewish immigration to the U.S., which began during the “Let My People
Go” campaign in the 1960s, when the American Jewish community led an
effort to persuade the Soviet Union to allow Jews to leave that
country. The Let My People Go campaign resulted in the migration to the
U.S. of more than 500,000 Russian Jews.

“HIAS’ goal of preserving its archive is of utmost importance to the
Russian Jewish community because it contains our history, and a record
of our arrival in the United States,” says Brin, who arrived from
Russia with her family in 1979. “This is something that our children
and grandchildren will appreciate when they want to know more about
their family history. It is also a way we in the Russian-speaking
community can show our gratitude to HIAS for bringing over and helping
resettle half a million Russian Jewish refugees in America.”

Brin, a scientist currently working on issues related to climate and
weather forecasting at NASA, is a graduate of the prestigious School of
Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University.

“We are honored to have Genia Brin chair this important campaign,”
says Neil Greenbaum, president and CEO of HIAS. “She understands, as a
Russian Jewish immigrant to America, how critical this project is for
future generations.”

The launch of the archive preservation project is a flagship effort
to coincide with HIAS’ 125th anniversary year beginning in 2006. The
fundraising effort will target Russian-Jewish immigrants, charitable
foundations and groups and individuals concerned with Jewish history
and genealogy.

A Time-Sensitive Problem

“The HIAS archive is a working archive,” explains Greenbaum. “We
must do something now to insure it survives well into the future,
otherwise we will fail in our duty to future generations to keep our
history alive.”

The HIAS archive has for years been used for locating lost or
dispersed family members, relatives and friends; research into personal
and family histories; status verification (e.g. Claims Conference,
Holocaust victims and their kin’s claims of restitution, as well as for
the Social Security Administration); and academic research. The
original paper case files, currently stored at a HIAS warehouse, are
deteriorating and expected to be unusable in a few years, explains
Greenbaum. Some files include century-plus-old delicate paper documents
that are already crumbling.

The archive contains arrival cards and cross-referenced microfilms
for approximately 70,000 families and individuals the agency helped
from 1970 through 1979 and computerized summaries of files for more
than 130,000 families and individuals resettled from 1979 to today.

In Phase I of the preservation project arrival cards that correspond
to paper case files from 1960 to the present will be digitized. That
will entail scanning and converting each arrival card into a digitized
format; creating a searchable database; manually inputting information
from files; and summarizing and integrating key information from the
approximately 250,000 records. A Web-based search tool, accessible to
appropriate individuals and their immediate family members, will be
developed for public access to “first level” information.

For information about how to participate in the HIAS archive
preservation campaign, contact Roberta Elliott at 212-613-1350, or Marina
Belotserkovsky at 212-613-1337.