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List of Refugees From Sofia (Bulgaria) and Prague (Czechoslovakia) Leaving HIAS’ Care For Palestine, Israel and the US (1948 – 1949)

Introduction by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

BACKGROUND

The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) is the world’s oldest refugee agency, formally incorporated in 1903. HIAS emerged from the work of several agencies which supported Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe beginning in the 1880s.

This data set comes from records of HIAS’s work in France during the war years. HIAS provided assistance to refugees in the form of legal support, monetary aid, and family reunification services, among other things, during this timeframe.

DATABASE

This database includes 364 records of refugees from Sofia, Bulgaria and Prague, Czechoslovakia that left for Israel and the US in 1949.

The fields for this database are as follows:

  • Image # (Scan image number within the YIVO folder)       
  • Surname
  • Given name
  • Transit country
  • Originally registered for
  • Final destination
  • Report date
  • Source (List #)
  • Comments

Below are the names of the lists within this collection.

List 1

Manifest for Emmigrants From Sofia 02-Nov-1949

List 2

Manifest for Emmigrants From Sofia 22-Oct-1949

List 3

Manifest for Emmigrants From Sofia 11-Oct-1949

List 4

Nominal Roll of Local Emigrants Who Left Directly From Our Country in April 1949

List 5

Nominal Roll of Local Emigrants Who Left Directly From Our Country in March 1949

List 6

Nominal Roll of Local Emigrants Who Left Directly From Our Country in February 1949

List 7

List of Persons Filing Applications For Assistance, Returned by IRO Mission (Prague) June 1949

List 8

List of Persons Filing Applications For Assistance, Returned by IRO Mission (Prague) July 1949

List 9

Advise of Daily Departure 04-Aug-1949

List 10

Nominal Roll of Emigrants who Left Directly to Place of Resettlement (July 1949)

List 11

Advise of Daily Departure 16-Aug-1949

List 12

Nominal Roll of Emigrants who Left Directly to Place of Resettlement (August 1949)

List 13

Nominal Roll of Emigrants who Departed Between 01-Sep-1948 and 31-Ded-1948

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The information contained in this database was indexed from the files available from the Center for Jewish History’s collection of scanned source documents from the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. This data set is from the “Records of HIAS-HICEM Main Office in Europe (RG 245.5, France I-IV)”, File: Box 76, Folder: France IV-215, Reel: 19.24).  It can be accessed online at https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/7/archival_objects/176113

Thank you to Nolan Altman, Director of Data Acquisition and Coordinator of Holocaust Database, for his continued devotion and dedication to JewishGen's important work.  

May 2025

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