The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany announced here today the allocation of $10,009,000 for 1957 to be used in programs of relief, rehabilitation and cultural and educational reconstruction for the benefit of 150,000 surviving victims of Nazism in 30 countries around the world. The allocation will raise to $40, 000, 000 the total granted by the Conference since 1954.
The 1957 budget was presented to the Conference board of directors by Jacob Blaustein, senior vice president of the Claims Conference and honorary president of the American Jewish Committee, one of the member organizations of the Conference. The board approved the 1957 allocations following Mr. Blaustein’s presentation at the closing session of the Conference meetings.
An aggregate of $7,500,000, three-quarters of the allocations for 1957, was granted by the Conference for relief and rehabilitation projects. The rest was allocated for other programs including cultural and educational reconstruction, and legal aid in the prosecution of restitution and indemnification claims by needy Nazi victims More than 470 Jewish organizations applied this year for grants exceeding $30,000,000, three times the aggregate of the sums available for allocation.
The Conference, composed of 22 major Jewish organizations throughout the free world obtains the funds it allocates by the terms of special agreements it concluded with the German Federal Republic and the Government of Israel. The Bonn-Israel reparations agreement of 1952 calls for the West German Government to deliver to Israel over a twelve-year span, goods and services valued at $822,000,000. The Conference share of the overall sum runs to $107,000,000.
$6,890,000 EARMARKED FOR RELIEF PROGRAMS IN EUROPE
Mr. Blaustein reported that $6,890,000 of all the 1957 grants for relief and rehabilitation activities were earmarked for programs in Europe, conducted there by Jewish communal and central welfare agencies and the American Joint Distribution Committee and will also be used to aid in the emigration of Nazi victims to overseas lands. The overwhelming share of the grants flowed to the lands under former Nazi occupation where the needs for individual and communal rehabilitation are most urgent, especially in the cases of the aged, the ill and the handicapped.
The Conference also granted $288,000 for the relief and rehabilitation of needy Nazi victims in South America and Australia and $290,000 for special funds in aid of refugee rabbis, invalids and former community leaders. Conference grants are used for cash relief, medical aid, care of the aged and infirm, child and youth care, emigration and resettlement aid, vocational training, rehabilitation loan funds and special capital investment projects.
Some 83,000 Nazi victims, nearly all in European lands, will be beneficiaries of the grants for relief and rehabilitation. In addition, 65,000 other Nazi victims in need, inhabiting 14 lands all over the world will receive legal aid, via the United Restitution Organization for the pressing of indemnification and restitution claims on the German Federal Republic. The URO received an allocation of $650,000 from the Conference to provide legal assistance.
$1,229,000 GRANTED FOR CULTURAL AND EDUCATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION
Mr. Blaustein announced that $1, 229,000 of its 1957 allocations were granted on behalf of world wide programs for Jewish cultural and educational reconstruction and for projects intended to aid in the rehabilitation of Nazi victims who are scholars, writers and teachers and to restore Jewish institutions and spiritual and cultural centers destroyed at Nazi hands. More than $565,000 of the grants went for use in Europe.
Some 70 percent of the cultural allocations were earmarked for Jewish education, including the provision of suitable school buildings and scholarship and fellowship grants to Nazi victims. About 23 percent will be absorbed by research and publication projects and the remaining 7 percent will be devoted, in principal measure, to the establishment or restoration of Jewish libraries, archives and museums and to the collection, preservation and publication of materials relating to the Jewish catastrophe in Europe.
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