The New York Association for New Americans (NYANA) was a UJC agency for refugee assistance located on the Battery in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. NYANA was founded in 1949 as a local arm of the

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

ish

United Service for New Americans The United Service for New Americans (USNA) was an aid organization founded in 1946 to help Jewish refugees from Europe, survivors from the camps and the war who often were the sole survivors from their families. The organization was the result of t ...

to assist in the resettlement of

refugee A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution.

s from the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

coming to the United States in the aftermath of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

.Beth B. Cohen
"Holocaust Survivors in America,"
''New York Archives'', Spring 2008, Volume 7, Number 4, accessed July 27, 2012 In the 1950s it served Jewish immigrants from Romania, Greece, Hungary, and Egypt, and in the 1960s from Cuba, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.Nancy Foner, ''New Immigrants in New York'' rev. ed. New York: Columbia, 2001, / 9780231124157 p. 119 After Jews were allowed to leave the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

in the mid-1970s, it expanded to assist large numbers of Jewish refugees from the former USSR, approximately 250,000 by 2004. But it also served non-Jewish refugees, beginning in 1972 with Ugandans and continuing with Southeast Asian boat people, Cambodians, Tibetans, and others. It is estimated to have served 500,000 people during its existence. Its headquarters were in the

Whitehall Building The Whitehall Building is a three-section residential and office building near the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City, adjacent to Battery Park in lower Manhattan. The original 20-story structure on Battery Place, between West St ...

on Battery Place in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

, and it had a satellite office in

Queens Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest New York City borough by area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long ...

. NYANA sought from its inception to provide one-stop services to refugees, including assistance finding housing, health, mental health and family services, an

English as a Second Language English as a second or foreign language is the use of English by speakers with different native languages. Language education for people learning English may be known as English as a second language (ESL), English as a foreign language (EF ...

school, vocational training, and licensing courses in addition to legal help with immigration and adjustment. As the number of refugees from the former Soviet Union declined, it reshaped itself under the direction of Jose Valencia, who held many internal leadership positions before being appointed CEO in 2004,Walter Ruby,
Longtime NYANA Chief Quits
" ''The New York Jewish Week'', August 20, 2004, accessed March 10, 2021 to serve the broader immigrant population, also offering citizenship assistance, a center for women and families, a mental-health clinic, and a substance-abuse program and programs in workforce and economic development, community development, and bi-culturation.PND - NPO Spotlight - New York Association for New Americans
posted Jan. 25, 2005, accessed Dec. 11, 2008 The NYANA English School taught incoming refugees as much English as possible in intensive classes. Initially the NYANA Method was aural/oral, based on the

ulpan An ulpan ( he, אולפן), plural ''ulpanim'', is an institute or school for the intensive study of Hebrew. Ulpan is a Hebrew word meaning "studio", "teaching", or "instruction". The ulpan is designed to teach adult immigrants to Israel the b ...

method used to teach Hebrew to new immigrants in Israel and using a short in-house textbook. Teachers were recruited from the performing arts community and included

Todd Solondz Todd Solondz (; born October 15, 1959) is an American filmmaker and playwright known for his style of dark, socially conscious satire. Solondz's work has received critical acclaim for its commentary on the "dark underbelly of middle class America ...

. However, in 1995 the school converted to a more conventional four-skills curriculum. In the late 1990s as numbers of refugees declined, increasing numbers of clients were assigned to ESL classes in neighborhood centers under short-term government grants and the school greatly reduced. At its peak, NYANA served 50,000 refugees per year, but shifting policies and needs caused this to decline to between 300 and 400 in 2007. Its peak budget was $90 million, which by 2008 had shrunk to $7.5 million. Joseph Lazar, a management consultant who was himself born in a

displaced persons camp A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for interna ...

in the late 1940s, was hired as director and a fund-raising dinner was held, but it raised only about $50,000 and the decision was made to close the agency in summer 2008.Adam Dickter
"NYANA to Close After Long Run Here,"
''The Jewish Week'', June 25, 2008, accessed May 16, 2012 Legal assistance cases were transferred to

New York Legal Assistance Group The New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) is a non-profit organization that provides free civil legal services to low-income New Yorkers. Its services include direct representation, case consultation, advocacy, community education, training, fina ...

, and the Business Center for New Americans, a department of NYANA providing financial and business services, became an independent

economic development organization An economic development organization (EDO) is an organization dedicated to the economic development of a region, be it a subnational area such as a town, city, county, province, or state; a whole nation; or transnational regions unified through econ ...

in 2009.

Notable former NYANA employees

Alex Halberstadt Alex Halberstadt is an American nonfiction writer and journalist. He grew up in Moscow and in 1980 came to the United States, where he and his family settled in New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School, Oberlin College and Columbia Univers ...

Gary Shteyngart Gary Shteyngart (; born July 5, 1972) is a Soviet-born American writer. He is the author of five novels (including ''Absurdistan'' and ''Super Sad True Love Story'') and a memoir. Much of his work is satirical. Early life Born Igor Semyonovich ...

Aliza Phillips, "An American, Leningrad Born: Novelist Gary Shteyngart, Coming Home", ''The Forward'', June 7, 2002
Online
at Highbeam, subscription required. *

Roman Turovsky Roman Turovsky-Savchuk (Ukrainian: Роман Туровський-Савчук) is an American artist-painter, photographer and videoinstallation artist, as well as a lutenist-composer,

Alexander Gelman Alexander Gelman (born December 21, 1960), born: Aleksandr Simonovich Gelman (russian: Алекса́ндр Си́монович Ге́льман) is an American theater director and the current Producing Artistic Director of Organic Theater Comp ...

* Jose F. Valencia, former CEO

References

External links

Business Center for New AmericansNew York Association for New Americans webpage
archived December 1, 2008 Jews and Judaism in New York City Organizations based in New York City Jewish refugee aid organizations Jewish organizations established in 1949 Refugee aid organizations in the United States