#immigrant aid

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, or HIAS, is an amalgamation of the many Jewish immigrant aid societies which operated between about 1880 through 1950—from the mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to the United States, to the crises in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa before, during, and after World War II.

HIAS, in its official reports and publications dating from 1911 onward, claims to have been founded in years ranging from 1870 to 1884. An Annual Report from 1911 set the founding date at 1888, while an annual report from 1914 gives 1908-1909. Documents from 1948, 1954, 1959, and 1964 all claim 1884 as the founding date. Yet, 1884 does not correspond to any identifiable late nineteenth century Jewish aid organization. HIAS presently—according to their website—uses 1881 as their founding date. 

The HIAS Archives team—tasked with processing the last 60 years of HIAS’ institutional archives—looked back through our records, along with the earlier HIAS records in the custody of the YIVO Institute, and secondary sources, to determine the veracity of these dates. Through our research, we determined that 1882 is the most accurate date of the organization’s founding; our conclusion is corroborated in historian Mark Wischnitzer’s Visas to Freedom: the History of HIAS.

To arrive at this conclusion, we had to look very closely at the immigrant aid societies formed by (primarily German) Jews to receive the ever-increasing numbers of their Eastern European coreligionists. And the picture which emerged from our research is not of a singular organization working to aid new arrivals, but an ad-hoc collection of groups, quickly forming and merging and re-merging in response to the unique challenges encountered by the new arrivals. The earliest of these organizations was the first Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society, established in 1870. The Russian Emigrant Relief Committee was established in 1881, and the second Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society formed out of said organization later that year. The Hebrew Emigrant Auxiliary Society—which Wischnitzer refers to as “the nearest approach to a parent organization of HIAS”—was founded in 1882.[1]

HIAS continued on, absorbing related immigrant aid organizations in Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia. In 1927 it joined forces with the Jewish Colonization Association (the JCA and/or ICA), and the Jewish Emigration Committee of Europe, known as Emigdirect, to form HICEM. HICEM acted as HIAS’ international arm, and was instrumental in their work conducted during the Second World War.

After the war, HICEM dissolved, and individual overseas HIAS offices took over the complex task of resettling the Jewish survivors and Displaced Persons of Europe, and later, of the Middle East and North Africa. In 1954, HIAS merged with the United Service for New Americans (USNA), and the Migration Department of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to form the United HIAS Service.

Today, it is simply “HIAS.”