International Refugee Organization Records

The Records of the International Refugee Organization consist of press releases and a passenger list relating to European refugees who came to the United States under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948.

Size: Less than one linear foot (approximately 300 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: No donation of copyright was received with this collection. Records created by employees of the U.S. Government as part of their official duties are in the public domain. The copyright interest in other documents in the collection presumably belongs to the creators of those documents or their heirs.
Processed by: Randy Sowell (2024).

The International Refugee Organization (IRO) was established on April 20, 1946 to address the refugee crisis following World War II. The IRO officially became an agency of the United Nations in 1948, assuming most of the functions of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). It was responsible for the administration of camps for displaced persons and for their resettlement in permanent homes. After the Displaced Persons Act was enacted in 1948, the IRO helped transport hundreds of thousands of refugees from Europe to the United States under the provisions of the legislation. The U.S. office of the IRO was located in Washington, D.C. The IRO was abolished in 1952, and its functions were assumed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Records of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) consist of press releases and a passenger list relating to European refugees who came to the United States under the provisions of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The press releases in the collection were issued by the IRO’s U.S. office in Washington, D.C. between February 1949 and November 1950, and contain information about the transportation of displaced persons from Europe and their arrival in the United States during this period. Most of these refugees traveled on ships chartered by the IRO. The press releases include such information as the names of the ships that had recently arrived in the United States or that were scheduled to arrive soon; the nationalities and professions of the passengers; the number of families and children; the states in which the immigrants would settle; and the voluntary agencies that were assisting them. (While the IRO paid for the trans-Atlantic passage of the refugees, organizations such as the National Catholic Welfare Board and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society were responsible for providing the new arrivals with transportation from the port of entry to their destinations in the United States, as well as suitable housing and employment as required by the Displaced Persons Act.) The press releases also include information about IRO airlifts of refugees—most notably, of orphaned children—to America, and some data concerning individual persons or families of note among the thousands of new arrivals.

Also included in the records is an alphabetical list of the passengers aboard the first shipload of refugees that came to the United States under the terms of the Displaced Persons Act. That vessel, the U.S. Army transport General Black, sailed from Bremerhaven in Germany on October 21, 1948 and arrived in New York on October 30. The list of 819 names also provides such information as the age, gender, marital status, nationality, occupation, and religion of each passenger.

These records were originally opened for research as part of the General Historical Documents Collection (GHDC 88).