Your Family History

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Working on your family tree? We can help you discover your Jewish genealogy with free access for family members to the records of Jewish refugees we helped in the 1930s and 40s. These include many of the 10,000 children who came on the Kindertransport, as well as men who came to the Kitchener camp, 732 child survivors from concentration camps known as The Boys and countless others who arrived on domestic visas or under guarantors.

World Jewish Relief was previously known as the Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF) and was established in 1933 to help refugees from Nazi-Europe, succeeding in bringing around 65,000 Jewish refugees to safety in Britain.

To preserve these important historical documents and protect information relevant to Jewish genealogy, our original records were digitised in 2015. This was done with the support of the Association of Jewish Refugees and the Otto Schiff Housing Association and has made it easier to reunite people with their Jewish ancestry records.

Read about the 2-year journey it took to digitise the full archive.

Our archive holds remarkable documents for many of the people that we helped. The files trace the help refugees received from World Jewish Relief in bringing individuals to Britain and assisting them to survive and establish their lives here. Sometimes only a registration card remains but they may also contain papers such as:

Case files
Birth certificates
Immigration papers
School records
Letters
Records of financial support provided by World Jewish Relief

Through our free ancestry search, we have reunited many families with the records of their historic ancestors. See some of the documents we have uncovered in this video of us returning archive files to families, or watch this moving account by Jerry Springer of how he felt when he received his family history documents.

To discover insights into your Jewish genealogy, fill in the form below and find out if our archive holds your family records. Once we have completed a database search, a member of our volunteer archive team will be in touch to let you know the outcome.

Note: The documents predominantly cover people who came from Germany and Austria. We are unlikely to have documents for Jewish refugees who arrived from Czechoslovakia, including the children rescued by Sir Nicholas Winton. However, please do make an enquiry as they may have registered with the CBF at a later date.

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If you have already said yes, we’ll continue to contact you as before. If you'd like to change the way we communicate with you or unsubscribe please contact us at info@worldjewishrelief.org or on 020 8736 1250.

Privacy

All files are reviewed before they are sent to you in order to minimise the risk of any distress caused to the recipient. For more information on how we use your personal information, please view our privacy policy.

World Jewish Relief stores refugee archive files based on our legitimate interest in promoting understanding and awareness of the role that World Jewish Relief (formerly CBF) played in supporting refugees before, during and after the Holocaust. We aim to help individuals to understand more about their family history. By submitting this form you agree that any information provided to you will not be republished other than for personal use. If you wish to republish the information for other purposes, this is only permitted in consultation with World Jewish Relief (archives@worldjewishrelief.org).

Your Family History

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