Latin American countries and France will be added to the list of countries served by the World Federation of National Councils of YM and YURA’S, the National Jewish Welfare Board announced today. Addition of these countries to those already served – the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Australia, which has had branches since 1944 – was authorized by the JWB as part of an eight-point program of “service and action on behalf of Jewish youth abroad.”
The program was recommended by Louis Kraft, executive director of the JWB, to the organization’s 29th annual meeting which concluded here today. Other proposals made by Mr. Kraft and approved by the JWB included:
1. Providing JWB field service for France and Latin America. 2. Assistance to Jewish communities overseas in selecting and training capable young people to become Jewish center workers by organizing a system of in-service training in the United States. 3. Translation of JWB’s cultural materials into Spanish and French. 4. Organizing a program of interchange of correspondence and visits by Jewish youth abroad and youth from Jewish centers in the United States and Canada. 5. Extension of the services of the JWB Lecture and Concert Bureau to Latin-American Jewry. 6. Stimulation by the JWB of visits and lectures by Yiddish speaking American rabbis to Latin-America.
A national Jewish patriotic shrine which will tell the story of the participation of the American Jewish community in all the wars of the United States will be established in Washington by the JWB. The shrine, which will be in the form of a permanent museum, will be housed in the building of the group’s Washington headquarters.
Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, addressing the closing dinner session of the annual meeting, told members of the organization that the assistance which their group had furnished the War Department during the war “has been invaluable” and expressed the hope that the work would be continued “by bringing into the chaplains corps new rabbis to serve the needs of our occupation troops.” General Omar Bradley, veterans’ administrator, congratulated the JWB on its “very fine war-time work and on your determination to continue this good work in Palestine.” John L. Sullivan, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, extended the congratulations of the Navy Department “for the splendid contribution made to the war effort by the JWB.”
A joint War and Navy department citation for “unique and outstanding service during World War II was presented by Lieut. Gen. J. Lawton Collins and received for the organization by Frank L. Weil, national president, who was re-elected for his seventh term.
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.
