Over the years, books, documents, archives, and photographs have been donated to the Center by Dutch Jews, especially emigrants to Israel, the United States, Canada, and other countries whose own children and grandchildren were no longer able to read the documents or understand their context. Their aim was to preserve these items for posterity and they hoped that their children and grandchildren would one day take an interest in them

Of late, growing numbers of descendants of Dutch Jews are indeed looking for their roots. Besides consulting family trees and searching for distant relatives with the aid of the Dutch Jewish Genealogical Data Base, they are trying to learn more about the lives of their grandparents and great-grandparents in the Netherlands and about their social, economic, and historical backgrounds. Often, learning about their own family history helps them learn about the wider historical context of Dutch Jewry.

It is the intention of the Center to preserve the donated items both for research purposes and as source material for laymen - particularly young people - using the Internet as a tool for delving into their past. In the Family Archives, the Center for Research on Dutch Jewry plans to provide detailed information on Jewish communities in the Netherlands, their way of life and burial customs, and Jewish life in the Netherlands after the Shoah. The Family Archives are meant to be a learning experience, both for the descendants who stayed in the Netherlands and especially for those non-Dutch-speaking descendants who are in need of sources in English and Hebrew.