Jewish American nonprofit organization
HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) is a Jewish American nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees. It was established on November 27, 1881, originally to help the large number of Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States who had left Europe to escape antisemitic persecution and violence. In 1975, the State Department asked HIAS to aid in resettling 3,600 Vietnam refugees. Since that time, the organization continues to provide support for refugees of all nationalities, religions, and ethnic origins. The organization works with people whose lives and freedom are believed to be at risk due to war, persecution, or violence. HIAS has offices in the United States and across Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Since its inception, HIAS has helped resettle more than 4.5million people.
Name.
According to HIAS, the acronym "HIAS" was first used as a telegraphic address and eventually became the universally used name of the organization. A 1909 merger with the Hebrew Sheltering Aid Society resulted in the official name Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, but the organization continued to be generally known as "H.I.A.S." or more usually as "HIAS", which eventually became the official name.
History.
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was established on November 27, 1881, originally to help the large number of Russian Jewish immigrants to the United States who had left Europe to escape antisemitic persecution and violence. J. Harwood Menken was its first president. The organization merged with the Hebrew Sheltering House Association, which had been founded in New York earlier that year.
In 1904, HIAS established a formal bureau on Ellis Island, the primary arrival point of European immigrants to the United States at that time.
In March 1909, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society merged with the Hebrew Sheltering House Association to form the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, which continued to be widely known as HIAS. By 1914, HIAS had branches in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, and an office in Washington, D.C.
In 1891, Jewish residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Kyiv were expelled and many came to America; beginning in 1892, Ellis Island was the point of entry for most of these new arrivals. In the half-century following the establishment of a formal Ellis Island bureau in 1904, HIAS helped more than 100,000 Jewish immigrants who might otherwise have been turned away. They provided translation services, guided immigrants through medical screening and other procedures, argued before the Boards of Special Enquiry to prevent deportations, lent needy Jews the $25 landing fee, and obtained bonds for others guaranteeing their employable status. The Society was active on the island facilitating legal entry, reception, and immediate care for the newly arrived.
HIAS also searched for relatives of detained immigrants in order to secure the necessary affidavits of support to guarantee that the new arrivals would not become public charges. Lack of such affidavits and/or material means impacted a large number of immigrants: of the 900 immigrants detained during one month in 1917, 600 were held because they had neither money nor friends to claim them. Through advertising and other methods, the society was able to locate relatives for the vast majority of detainees, who in a short time were released from Ellis Island.
Many of the Jews traveling in steerage on the steamship lines across the Atlantic refused the non-kosher food served on their journeys and arrived at Ellis Island malnourished and vulnerable to deportation on medical grounds. In 1911, the Society installed a kosher kitchen on the Island. Between 1925 and 1952, HIAS' kosher kitchen provided more than a half million meals to immigrants; in the peak year, 1940, 85,794 meals were served. The Society also provided religious services and musical concerts at Ellis Island. It ran an employment bureau and sold railroad tickets at reduced rates to immigrants headed for other cities.
In the summer of 1911, HIAS set up an Oriental Department to meet the growing needs of immigrants from the Balkans and Near East, who began arriving in the U.S. in considerable numbers. Between 1908 and 1913, approximately 10,000 Jewish emigrants left the Middle East for the U.S.
During this period, resettlement of Jewish immigrants included assistance in obtaining U.S. citizenship. For this a rudimentary knowledge of English and familiarity with American institutions were mandatory. In addition to classes given at its own building, HIAS arranged educational courses for the immigrants through a network of local Jewish organizations. From 1909 to 1913, HIAS helped more than 35,000 new immigrants become naturalized citizens.
World War I.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 brought the largest influx of Jews from Eastern Europe to date: 138,051 in that year alone. However, when the North Atlantic became a battle zone and German submarines seriously impaired overseas passenger traffic, immigration numbers plunged. The war made it increasingly difficult for American-based families to maintain contact with their scattered family members behind enemy lines. To address this, HIAS sent one of its operatives to Europe to establish communications. He succeeded in securing permission from the German and Austro-Hungarian High Command for residents of the military zones to write short messages to their families to be distributed by HIAS in New York. HIAS also accepted and delivered messages sent by the zone's non-Jewish population. By war's end, HIAS had transmitted a total of 300,000 communications on behalf of separated families.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 – and the following civil war, famine, and pogroms that left about 50,000 Jews dead – created another surge of emigration from the former Russian Empire. HIAS continued to help these immigrants find safe haven despite growing anti-immigration sentiments in the U.S.
In 1918 HIAS sent a representative, Samuel Mason, on a mission to Japan, Manchuria and Vladivostok on behalf of thousands of European immigrants stranded in the Far East by the World War and the Russian Revolution. He established HIAS offices and international post offices and succeeded in helping both Jews and non-Jews on their journeys to new homes in the US and other countries. He also established The Central Information Bureau for Jewish War Sufferers in the Far East which worked with HIAS to help Jewish refugees in Shanghai through the end of World War II.
Between the years 1909 and 1919, HIAS registered 482,742 immigrants arriving in the U.S. HIAS' Ellis Island Bureau interceded with 28,884 held for special inquiry, of whom 22,780 were admitted based on second hearings, with only 6,104 deported. During this period HIAS facilitated the naturalization of 64,298 immigrants.
Between the wars.
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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
World War II and the Holocaust.
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.
HICEM's European headquarters were in Paris. 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. 
 Initially this action by Salazar was done against the will of the British Embassy in Lisbon. The British feared that this would make the Portuguese people less sympathetic with the allied cause. According to the Lisbon Jewish community, Salazar held Moisés Bensabat Amzalak, the leader of the Lisbon Jewish community in high esteem and that allowed Amzalak to play an important role in getting Salazar's permission to transfer from Paris to Lisbon the main HIAS European Office in June 1940.
The French office reopened in October 1940, first in Bordeaux, for a week, and finally in Marseilles in the so-called "free zone" of Vichy France. 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.
When all legal emigration of Jews from France ceased, HICEM began to operate clandestinely from the town of Brive la Gaillarde. 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.
During this period, HICEM in France worked closely with HICEM in Lisbon. 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.
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" or JDCs), 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.
Other rescue organizations also moved their European offices to Lisbon at that time, including "the Joint". They also included (the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers) (see History of the Quakers).
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 Joint's assistance. HICEM was dissolved in 1945; HIAS continued its work in Europe under its own