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Refugees in a Food Line in Bucharest, Romania
Elderly refugees, such as this 75-year-old woman newly arrived in Bucharest, had the hardest time surviving the rigorous journey to safety during World War I. Romania joined the Allied war effort in...
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People in a Joint Distribution Committee Transmission Bureau to Send Money to...
During World War I, Americans who had relatives living in the war zones sought ways to send help to their families. The Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for the Relief of Jewish War...
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Justice Calls Your Attention to the Tragedy of the Jew
In a nationwide publicity campaign initiated while World War I was raging, American Jewish leaders brought home to the American public the extent of the suffering abroad and the need for relief...
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World War I Prisoner of War Card
This card was issued in 1920 to a Hungarian prisoner of war, Kiksa Biro, by the Vladivostok branch of the Joint Distribution Committee of the American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (later the...
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Crowded Living Conditions for Jewish Refugees
This photograph shows a group of refugees, including young children and elderly people, sharing one room in a building in Friedrichstadt (present-day Jaunjelgava), Latvia. Friedrichstadt had been a...
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Men Load a Joint Distribution Committee Vehicle onto a Bridge during a Field...
The Russian Civil War (1918−20) made travel through disputed territories difficult and dangerous. Even if cities and towns were reachable by train (where they were still operating), humanitarian...
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Childen Wearing Makeshift Coats from Flour Sacks outside an Orphanage in...
These children in Grodno, Poland (present-day Hrodna, Belarus) were among tens of thousands of Jewish war orphans who between 1914 and 1920 had lost one or both parents on the battlefield, in military...
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Children outside a Public Soup Kitchen in Rowne, Poland
This photograph shows a group of poor Jewish children, barefoot and holding their pots, waiting to receive food at a soup kitchen in Rowne, Poland (present-day Rovno or Rivne, Ukraine). Even after the...
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Ruined Home, Suceava, Romania
This photograph shows a man posing in front of a home in Suceava (present-day northeastern Romania, until 1918 in southern Bukovina, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) that was destroyed during...
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Ruined Buildings in Siret, Romania
This photograph shows Jewish residents of Siret, a town in northeastern Romania close to the border with Ukraine, standing in front of a ruined building slated for reconstruction. Siret was located in...
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Female Shopkeepers Given Aid by the Joint Distribution Committee to Begin...
Peddlers’ shops in the war-torn small towns in large swaths of Eastern Europe were ruined by World War I and the Russo-Polish War that followed in 1919‒20. Interest-free small business loans enabled...
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Orphaned Refugees in a Children's Home in Kiev
This orphanage in Kiev, Ukraine, took in children, mostly from small towns, who had survived the pogroms (anti-Jewish riots) of May 1920. In the years immediately following the Russian Revolution and...
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Jewish War Orphans Arrive in the United States
This photograph from 1921 shows a group of children orphaned as a result of World War I, newly arrived in New York harbor and about to begin a new life, posing with American flags. The war brought...
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Orphanage Kindergarten in Brest-Litovsk, Poland
This photograph shows kindergarten teachers and pupils in a yard of the orphanage on Pushkinskaya Street in Brest-Litovsk, Poland (Yiddish, Brisk; present-day Brest, Belarus). After World War I and...
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Map of the Fortifications of Yorktown, Virginia
This pen-and-ink and watercolor manuscript map shows an unfinished plan for the Siege of Yorktown in September‒October 1781. York (more commonly known as Yorktown after the Revolutionary War) was...
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Map of York, Virginia Showing the Attacks by the French and American Armies...
This pen-and-ink and watercolor manuscript map shows the movements of the French and American armies in the vicinity of York, Virginia, in October 1781, during the Battle of Yorktown. The map is by...
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Rochambeau’s Army, 1782. Map of the Williamsburg, Virginia Area, Where the...
This topographic pen-and-ink and watercolor manuscript map of the Williamsburg, Virginia, area was made in 1782 by Jean Nicolas Desandrouins, a French army engineer and cartographer, shortly after the...
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Map of the Environs of Williamsburg, York, Hampton, and Portsmouth
This pen-and-ink manuscript map of 1781 shows the towns of Williamsburg, York, Hampton, and Portsmouth, Virginia, as well as the surrounding regions of southeastern Virginia. The area shown on the map...
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Detailed Map of West Point on the York River, at the Confluence of the...
This 1781 pen-and-ink and watercolor manuscript map shows the region around West Point, Virginia, situated at the point where the Pamunkey and Matapony (present-day Mattaponi) Rivers join to form the...
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Map of the Fortifications of Portsmouth, Virginia
This 1781 pen-and-ink and watercolor manuscript map shows the fortifications and houses of Portsmouth, Virginia, at the time of the American Revolution. Portsmouth served as a primary British post and...
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