An enlarged quota of $4,650,000 to meet the increasingly desperate position of the Jews in Eastern and Central Europe was adopted for the 1937 campaign of the Joint Distribution Committee today by its Plan and Scope Committee.
The committee of Jewish leaders from various communities of the Unite States and Canada, in an all-day meeting at the Concordia Club, at which Paul Baerwald presided, elected Felix M. Warburg as chairman of the campaign and made budget allotments.
The allotments, which are contingent on the raising of the full quota are: $2,150,000 for Poland and Eastern Europe, $1,300,000 for Germany and $850,000 for refugee countries, including France, Holland, Czechoslovakia and Belgium. The work includes emigration from Germany, retraining, education, vocational training, child care, particularly in Poland, and general welfare and emergency work.
The other campaign officers elected are: Paul Baerwald, William Rosenwald and Rabbi Jonah Wise, co-chairmen; James Becker, Chicago, Leon Falk Jr., Pittsburgh, Salmon P. Halle, Cleveland, Meyer Prentis, Detroit and William Shroder, Cincinnati, vice-chairmen; Jerome Rothschild, Philadelphia, treasurer; Joseph C. Hyman, secretary; Morris Troper, comptroller, and Isidor Coons, campaign director.
The committee stressed “the increasingly desperate situation of many sections of the Jewish population in Eastern and Central Europe” and also that “the Joint Distribution Committee, as the representative agency of the Jews of the United States and Canada, is called upon to continue and extend the sphere of its activities and greatly to enlarge its service of reconstructive aid and relief to Jewish people overseas.”
Mr. Hyman emphasized that the tragedy of the Jew in Poland now numerically overshadows the continuing tragedy of the Jews, hopeless in Germany. Other speakers expressed the realization of American Jewry that the utmost that can be done would be inadequate to meet the situation.
A widening area of tragedy for Jews in 1937 was portrayed by Mr. Hyman. He outlined the tasks of the J.D.C., including emigration, education and relief in Germany and opening of new occupations and support of welfare and credit institutions for Jews in Eastern Europe.
“The entire situation of the Jews overseas we must understand as part of a world crisis,” he declared. “Poverty is general in those areas where Jews are most disadvantaged. The greater the general poverty, the greater the impetus to make the Jews the scapegoat.”
He warned that “it is in terms of millions of human beings that we must think, and it is in terms of millions of dollars, in terms of the most generous and widespread giving in the fortunate land of America that we must act if our program is even in the slightest degree to fit the necessities overseas.”
Mr. Hyman denounced the “inhuman and cruel” demand that “the Jews and they alone of the entire population should be deemed to be a surplus element to be exported or deported wherever economic stringency arises,” adding that unless governments and peoples could be persuaded that “a healthy, self-supporting Jewish population is conducive to the sound and wholesome economy of the entire state, the outlook for the Jewish people in these countries is ominous.”
Mr. Coons reported that 1,100 cities and towns of the United States and Canada contributed a gross total of $2,801,000 to the 1936 campaign.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
