Although the Joint Distribution Committee ended its relief and assistance activities in seven countries in 1949, the agency aided more than 600,000 Jews overseas last year and estimates that 500,000 in distressed areas still require its help, according to the 1949 J.D.C. Annual Report to be published tomorrow.
The progress achieved in restoring Jews abroad and helping them to emigrate made it possible for the J.D.C. to withdraw voluntarily from Bulgaria, Cyrpus, Luxembourg and Yugoslavia. Also during the year the agency terminated programs in Rumania, Poland and Czechoslovakia at the order of those goverments.
Entitled “The Year of Deliverance,” the report discloses that in 1949 the J.D.C. appropriated $59,745,000 for a three-fold program of relief, reconstruction and resettlement for Jews in 26 countries in Europe, North Africa and the Orient. Accounts of the agency’s work are given by Edward M.M. Warburg, chairman; Moses A. Leavitt, executive vice-chairman; and Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, director-general of the J.D.C.’s overseas operations.
Writing on the work which still remains to end Jewish suffering overseas, Dr. Schwartz states that “despite the outstanding progress of 1949, a mimimum of 500,000 men, women and children in European and Moslem lands look to the J.D.C. for help–to work, to amigrate, and in thousands of instances just to remain alive.” For its 1950 work, the organization has estimated it will require $44,512,000, most of which must be furnished by the United Jewish Appeal.
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.
