A budget of $28.591,000 for operations during 1958 was voted here today at the annual meeting of the Joint Distribution Committee. The new budget calls for a $2,000,000 increase over 1957 expenditures.
The new fiscal program includes a $1,000,000 appropriation for “emergency aid to refugees.” The largest single item is for $12,000,000 to be spent on JDC’s Malben welfare and medical program in Israel. The budget will be submitted to a conference this week-end of the United Jewish Appeal.
The JDC meeting reelected Edward M.M. Warburg chairman for the 13th successive year. Moses A. Leavitt was reelected executive vice chairman and Charles H. Jordan director general for overseas operations. A resolution adopted at the parley pledged the JDC’s “continued and dedicated support to the UJA” and urged the American Jewish community to “bend its every effort to meet the needs now existing and which will inevitably arise.”
Mr. Warburg recalled his wartime experiences when refugees told him that “those who died might have lived if only they had somewhere to go.” He reminded the delegates of the case of the steamer “Struma” and its horrible loss of lives, and of the Nazi practice of dumping refugees in no-man’s land where they had to remain “because no country would accept them.”
He contrasted this situation with 1956 and 1957 when thousands of Jews fled across borders as refugees. “These refugees did not die, they lived,” he declared. Mr. Warburg noted that while thousands “sought their future in other friendly countries, most went to Israel” which welcomed any who chose to go there.
George L. Warren, State Department adviser on refugees and displaced persons, told the conference that “we must face up to the realization that for the foreseeable future we will always have refugees in one part of the world or another.”
He warned that “we must plan and budget not for refugee emergencies but for refugee normalcies. We must lay out plans both with respect to organization and with respect to providing means of assistance based on these assumptions. If we do not plan in this fashion, we are indicating in effect that we are prepared to permit thousands of refugees to suffer or to die every year.”
RESOLUTION STRESSES REFUGEE NEEDS; CITES AID TO REPATRIATES IN POLAND
The resolution adopted at the meeting noted that “the great movements of refugees are now bound to carry over into 1958, and many of these refugees find themselves in camps and reception centers, more so than in any year since the height of the DP era, while other thousands are still seeking to integrate themselves into the economies of their new homelands.”
Citing the JDC program for aid to 10,000 Jewish repatriates to Poland from Russia, the resolution adds that “this present number cannot help but give birth to the hope that we may–before long–be in a position to provide aid to others of the hundreds of thousands of Jews living now in Eastern Europe, in keeping with JDC’s tradition of rescue and mercy.”
The JDC activities for 1957 were reviewed by Mr. Leavitt and the JDC needs for 1958 were outlined by Mr. Jordan. James H. Becker, chairman of the JDC National Council, who presided at the afternoon session, pointed out that “a considerable number of JDC’s officers are veterans of 20, 30 and 40 years of service,” and declared: “I think that there is something extraordinary in this situation. I think that it reflects on the uniqueness of JDC and its mission, that the organization and its work could have successfully commanded our loyalty over so long a period of time, and despite all the other appeals to our time and energies.”
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.
