Jewish Agency for Israel


"The Search Bureau for Missing Relatives Department" is a department of the Jewish Agency for Israel. 

Shortly after World War II, the Jewish Agency, an international Jewish help organization, established a division to assist Holocaust survivors in locating relatives who might have moved to Israel either before or after the war as Holocaust survivors. Situated in Jerusalem, this division of the Agency is known as the Search Bureau for Missing Relatives. The bureau maintains a database of the more than one million requests that it has received since its inception. In recent years, the bureau has taken on a more general role of locating relatives in Israel independent of reason. For example, in the 1990s, much effort has been devoted to helping Russian Jews locate relatives who might have emigrated to Israel. The success of this organization is due primarily to the dedication of its director, Batya Unterschatz, who worked at the task from 1972 until her retirement in 2002. Her commitment to her job and her access to Israeli government information earned her an international reputation for successfully locating relatives living in Israel.

Unfortunately, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem recently closed down the Search Bureau for Missing Relatives.
See http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Holocaust/0058_PinkasNitzolimII.html.