SENDER WITH JEWISH LAST NAME "SCHWARZ," SENT TO LOTTE FEIBUSCH (JEWISH NAME), CAR OF HICEM IN SHANGHAI CHINA -- The dislocation and turmoil following World War I led to acts of anti-Semitism throughout the former war zone, especially in Poland, Romania, Russia, and Hungary. While other Jewish agencies, most notably the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ("The Joint"), supplied Jews in the affected countries with food, clothing, and medical supplies, HIAS created a worldwide network of Jewish organizations to provide assistance in immigration to the U.S., Canada, South America, Australia, and China.

The establishment of HICEM in 1927 proved critical to the later rescue operation that saved thousands of Jewish lives during World War II.[21]

HICEM resulted from the merger of three Jewish migration associations: New York-based HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society); Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), which was based in Paris but registered as a British charitable society; and Emigdirect (United Jewish Emigration Committee), a migration organization based in Berlin. HICEM is an acronym of these organizations' names.[21]

The agreement between the three organizations stipulated that all local branches outside the U.S. would merge into HICEM, while HIAS would still deal with Jewish immigration to the U.S. However, Emigdirect was forced to withdraw from the merger in 1934, and British wartime regulations later restricted the JCA from using its funds outside Britain. Thus, for a while, HICEM was funded exclusively by HIAS and could be considered as its European extension.[21]

In 1923, HIAS established the HIAS Immigrant Bank at 425 Lafayette Street in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. The bank was licensed by the State of New York.[22] Its sole purpose was to facilitate remittance or money transfers to and from immigrants’ families abroad, which was then a service not offered by most U.S. banks.[23]

World War II and the Holocaust[edit]

By the time World War II broke out in September 1939, HICEM had offices throughout Europe, South and Central America, and the Far East. Its employees advised and prepared European refugees for emigration, including helping them during their departure and arrival.[citation needed]

HICEM's European headquarters were in Paris.[24] After Germany invaded and conquered France in mid-1940, HICEM closed its Paris offices. On June 26, 1940, two days after France capitulation the main HIAS-HICEM Paris Office was authorized by Portuguese ruler António de Oliveira Salazar to be transferred from Paris to Lisbon. According to the Lisbon Jewish community, Salazar held Moisés Bensabat Amzalak, the leader of the Lisbon Jewish community in high esteem and that allowed Amazlak to play an important role in getting Salazar's permission to transfer from Paris to Lisbon the main HIAS European Office in June 1940.[25][26]

The French office reopened in October 1940, first in Bordeaux, for a week, and finally in Marseilles in the so-called "free zone" Vichy France.[24] Until November 11, 1942, when the Germans occupied all of France, HICEM employees were at work in French internment camps, such as the infamous Gurs. HIAS looked for Jews who met U.S. State Department immigration requirements, and were ready to leave France. At the time of the German invasion of France, there were approximately 300,000 native and foreign Jews living in France; however, the State Department's policies curbing immigration meant that the number of applicants to America far exceeded the number allowed to leave.[citation needed]

When all legal emigration of Jews from France ceased, HICEM began to operate clandestinely from the town of Brive la Gaillarde.[27] It had an office in the upper level of the building of the Synagogue led by Rabbi David Feuerwerker, the Rabbi of Brive. Here a small group of HICEM employees – establishing contact and cooperation with the local underground forces of the French resistance – succeeded in smuggling Jews out of France to Spain and Switzerland. Twenty-one HICEM employees were deported and killed in the concentration camps; others were killed in direct combat with the Nazis.[citation needed]

During this period, HICEM in France worked closely with HICEM in Lisbon.[27] Lisbon, as a neutral port, was the path of choice for Jews escaping Europe to North and South America. Many of these fled from the Netherlands and Belgium and through France, or else started directly in France, and then were smuggled and climbed over the Pyrenees with "passeur" guides to Barcelona, and then by train through Madrid and finally to Lisbon. From Lisbon many refugee Jewish families sailed to America on the Serpa Pinto or its sister ship the Mouzinho.[28]

In the main, HICEM (HIAS) helped intact or semi-intact families to flee. But, often together with Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) or with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee" ("the Joint," it also helped unaccompanied children to flee without their parents. At French concentration camps, such as the notorious Gurs, many of these children were officially allowed by the Nazis to leave but required to leave their parents in the camps. Those unaccompanied children who were forced to leave their parents behind, and who fled directly to the United States are part of the group known as the One Thousand Children (OTC) (which actually numbers about 1400). Nearly all the OTC parents were murdered by the Nazis.[citation needed]

Other rescue organizations also moved their European offices to Lisbon at that time, including "the Joint" (the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). They also included (the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers) (see History of the Quakers).[29]

From 1940 onward, HICEM's activities were partly supported by the Joint. Despite friction between the two organizations, they worked together to provide refugees with tickets and information about visas and transportation, and helped them leave Lisbon on neutral Portuguese ships, mainly, as already stated above, the Serpa Pinto and the Mouzinho. In all, some 40,000 Jews managed to escape Europe during the Holocaust with HICEM's and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the Joint's or JDC's) assistance.[citation needed] HICEM was dissolved in 1945; HIAS continued its work in Europe under its own name.[24]

In the wake of World War II, HIAS assumed its most massive job to date – assisting with the emigration needs of the approximately 300,000 Jewish displaced persons throughout the former war zone. Nearly every surviving Jewish family in Central and Eastern Europe had been separated, with parents and children scattered throughout many countries. Reuniting them so they could emigrate as a unit was one of the primary tasks for HIAS workers in the field. Obtaining documents required for emigration was difficult as throughout the war people had fled from one place to another, escaped from concentration camps to hide in villages and forests, then reappeared under assumed names. Identity papers were destroyed; false papers, fabricated papers, or, most often, no papers at all, were common. HIAS operations set up for DP work in Germany and Austria at the end of 1945 were the largest in the history of the organization in any one country, and they kept growing with the flood of refugees streaming out of Poland and Romania.

HIAS offices functioned in Hoechst, Frankfurt, Munich, Foehrenwald, Stuttgart, Berlin, Bremen, Hanover, Regensburg, Baden-Baden, Vienna, Linz, and Salzburg, with HIAS representatives stationed in the camps themselves. Besides Germany, HIAS worked in France, Italy, and Eastern European countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. HIAS functioned in Shanghai until 1950, helping refugees who had escaped eastward from Nazi-occupied Europe to immigrate to Australia, the Americas, and Europe.

From 1945 to 1951, HIAS sponsored and assisted a total 167,450 emigrants: 79,675 of these immigrated to the U.S.; 24,049 to the British Commonwealth; 24,806 to Latin America; and 38,920 to Israel and other countries.