Beginnings of Joint Distribution Committee 18 Years Ago by Sending Ship with Medicine and Foodstuffs

The time eighteen years ago when we started our work by sending a ship, “The Vulcan”, with medicine and foodstuffs to Palestine was recalled by Mr. Felix M. Warburg, the Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, at its Conference opened here on Saturday evening to launch the campaign for 2½ million dollars for the relief of East European Jewry.

I remember as you do, Mr. Warburg went on, when we started our work in Eastern Europe by sending Dr. Magnes abroad. This led to the establishment of relief headquarters in Holland; then food was sent to Jews starving in Poland, Roumania, and other countries.

Mr. Herbert H. Lehman, Lieut.-Governor of New York State, who was chairman of the Saturday evening session, spoke of the reconstructive work of the organisation in restoring “over 12,000 war destroyed homes in Poland, Lithuania, Bukovina, and other countries, of the establishment of over 300 trade schools and workshops in Eastern Europe and Russia, and of the most significant work of the reconstruction committee, the creation, re-establishment and strengthening of the Jewish credit co-operative movement in Europe. Today, he said, a vast network of Jewish credit co-operative societies stretches from one end of Eastern Europe to the other. From a membership of 150,000 in 1924 we have a membership now of 325,000. The participation of the people themselves in the resources of the co-operatives is in a ratio of five to one – five dollars are applied by the people themselves for every dollar invested by the Foundation.

You will note that the Joint Distribution Committee has expended from its inception in 1914 through 1930, in actual cash, approximately 80 million dollars, Mr. Paul Baerwald said in reporting on the financial work. The 80 million dollars to which I have referred only represents the actual cash which has come into the treasury, he explained. It does not refer to an amount of about 40 million dollars in kind and in money which has been sent through the agency of the Joint Distribution Committee in the transmission department.

Mr. Baerwald mentioned the efforts of the European Jews to take over their share of the reconstructive work on their own behalf. I will only mention the child care work in Poland, he said. To this work we contributed in 1926, 50 per cent. of the funds required, and this proportion came down in 1929 to 20 per cent. This statement proves conclusively how great and how successful have been the local efforts of so many communities to assume, as soon as they were financially able, a great part of the burden of these fundamental activities.

Mr. James N. Rosenberg told of the unemployment plight in Poland. To-day, he said, for every ten unemployed in 1929 there are 24 unemployed. Surely these figures tell of the despair which has invaded thousands of Jewish homes. If therefore we of America have a few less raisins in our cake, surely we will not forget that whereas our kinsmen overseas are the most unfortunately circumstanced, we of America continue to be the most fortunately circumstanced Jews in history.

The cultural work of the committee in aiding over 2,000 institutions of learning, religious and secular, and reaching a student body of 250,000, was described by Dr. Cyrus Adler. If there were no other need of our brethren in Eastern Europe, Dr. Adler said, if their hospitals and orphan asylums were grade A and fully supported, if their loan societies were sufficient at least to meet their barest economic needs and if the only thing they required was help in their religious and educational work, I should still feel justified in bringing this need to the attention of my fellow Jews in America. Because I cam imagine no more tragic outcome of the many centuries of Jewish life than that we should be strong and well and self-supporting and have lost our Judaism and our Jewish heritage. This is the only thing that really makes us worth while.

MESSAGES FROM PRESIDENT HOOVER AND PROFESSOR EINSTEIN: CONFERENCE EXPRESSES APPRECIATION TO MR. JULIUS ROSENWALD FOR HIS WORK IN SETTLING RUSSIAN JEWS ON LAND.

The delegates unanimously adopted a resolution forwarded to Mr. Julius Rosenwald, expressing the appreciation of the Jews of America for his work on behalf of Jewish agricultural colonisation in Russia, and paying him warm tribute for his “manificent leadership and generosity in settling over a quarter of a million Jews on about three million acres in Russia.”

President Hoover sent a message to the Conference recalling his association with the Joint Distribution Committee work at the time he headed the American Relief Administration. I have been very much interested to learn that you and your associates are continuing the work of the Joint Distribution Committee, the President wrote to Mr. Warburg. I am able to review in memory the period of more than twelve years of its constructive endeavours, many of them in concert with organisations over which I presided. I trust that the national Conference of the Joint Distribution Committee will result in continuation of the hearty co-operation and support which have made possible the success that has hitherto accompanied its benevolent activities.

Professor Albert Einstein, as Honorary President of the Oze, sent a cable to the Conference in which he wrote:

On behalf of the Oze we convey our very best wishes to the Joint Distribution Committee Convention in their effort to continue the great cause of American Jewry in reconstructing the life of the East European Jews and raising their physical strength in these especially hard times. Such a devoted brotherly help strengthens the trust of the people in a better future.