M.20 - Archive of Dr. Abraham Silberschein, Geneva: Documentation regarding relief to persecuted Jews, 1939-1951

M.20 - Archive of Dr. Abraham Silberschein, Geneva: Documentation regarding relief to persecuted Jews, 1939-1951 Born in 1882, in Lwow, Poland, Dr. Abraham Silberschein was an attorney who dedicated himself to public service. He was one of the outstanding leaders of the Labor Zionist movement in Poland, and in 1922, he was elected by the movement to serve in the Polish Sejm as the Labor Zionist representative . In 1930 he arrived in Geneva as a representative to the Zionist Congress. Due to the outbreak of World War II, Dr. Silberschein did not return to Poland, but he remained in Switzerland from where he tried to organize relief activities for the persecuted Jews in Poland and Germany. He was the founder of the "Relico" Organization and through Relico he administered rescue and relief activities throughout the war and afterwards. He maintained contact and cooperated with Jewish institutions throughout the world as well as with non-Jewish bodies in Switzerland to which he passed on information regarding German war crimes in the occupied countries of Europe. He gleaned the most important information from testimonies of refugees who succeeded in escaping from Poland. He duplicated these reports on mimeograph machines in 1944 and made them available to newspapers and diplomatic legations in Switzerland, as well as to Jewish organizations. He considered the essence of his activity to be the sending of rescue documents to as many Jews as possible in the German occupied countries. Dr. Abraham Silberschein's archive was transferred to Israel from Geneva after Dr. Silberschein's death in 1952. For ten years, the archive was housed in the cellar of the Poalei Zion-Hitachdut party (some of whose members joined the Mapai party) building in Tel Aviv. In 1962 the archive was transferred to Yad Vashem. The original order of the archive had not been preserved, and when the material was brought to Yad Vashem, an attempt was made to sort the material and file it according to the original order, as it was assumed to have been. Besides the correspondence files, a series of files was set up according to subjects and places, as well as files with reports and testimonies regarding the events in the German occupied countries. The archive contains material from 1939-1950. Most of the material deals with relief activities for the Jews of Poland, the Netherlands, France, Italy and other countries. Additionally, there is documentation regarding rescue attempts in which Dr. Silberschein was involved. In the archive there is much documentation regarding the condition of the Jews in these countries during World War II and afterwards, as well as documentation regarding the condition of the Jews in the DP camps in Germany and Austria. Ten files that previously had been part of the archives of Josef Thon, a public figure in Poland were added to the Silberschein Archive. Thon, too, arrived in Geneva in 1939 and remained there until he could emigrate to the United States in early 1941.