VSJF-Refugees Migration

The VSJF-Refugees Migration data are an excerpt of the VSJF-database hosted at the Archives of Contemporary History, ETH Zurich. The database contains data sets of refugees which have been registered by the “Association of Swiss Jewish Refugee Aid and Welfare Organisations” (Verband Schweizerischer Jüdischer Fürsorgen, VSJF), a private organisation for the aid to Jewish refugees founded 1925 and active to the present time.

The organisation was responsible for the aid for most Jewish refugees who entered Switzerland. However, some refugees did not claim for assistance because they had savings or could take employment (after World War II) they were not registered by the VSJF. At the beginning almost all costs of the aid were borne by private donations or partner organisations. Only after World War II, Swiss public authorities started to refund a significant part of the organisation's expenses.

Based on the historical archives of the VSJF with more than 12'000 files containing about 1.5 million pages of documents, the Archives of Contemporary History gathered data on around 20'000 mostly Jewish refugees who entered Switzerland between 1898 and end of 1975. In order to protect data privacy, 390 records of refugees who entered Switzerland after 31.12.1975 as well as all the dates of birth, professions and names have been either filtered or anonymized.