Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, reporting today on the program of the Israel Bond Organization during the ten years he has been executive vice-president, said that in that ten-year period between May 16, 1955 through May 15, 1965, a total of approximately $600,000,000 in Israel Bonds was sold in the United States and other parts of the free world.
He told a press conference also that during 1955, a total of $43,507,150 was sold in Israel Bonds. Last year, proceeds from the Israel Bond campaign amounted to $85,360,350 or almost twice the figure of ten years ago, he said. He also reported that total sales since the inception of the program in May 1951 was $775,000,000.
He emphasized that in recent years the Israel Bond campaign had broken new ground in tapping sources outside the framework of the Jewish community. Labor unions almost all of them with largely non-Jewish membership have been buying Israel Bonds in substantial amounts, he reported. “Hundreds of banks have also bought millions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds. In 1964, alone, more than $12,000,000 in Israel Bonds were sold to banks.”
He declared also that Israel Bond had “introduced a new dimension in the relations between Israel and American Jewry–the dimension of self-reliance born out of the power of a sovereign state to float a public loan and ask for outside assistance on the basis of give and take, of investment backed up by the material and human resources of a nation.”
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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.