Central Committee of Polish Jews in USSR Closes; Last Leader Arrives in Warsaw

The liquidation of the Central Committee of Polish Jews in the USSR was announced here today by Dr. David Sfard. the last of the leaders of the Committee to leave Moscow for Poland.

The Committee, which was established in July, 1944, played an important role in organizing material and cultural aid for the approximately 200,000 Polish Jews who found asylum in the USSR during the war and who were gradually repatriated to Poland during the past year. The Committee also aided in organizing the repatriation of Polish Jews to their native towns.

Upon his arrival from Moscow, Dr. Sfard told the Central Committee of Polish Jews in Warsaw that the liquidation of the Moscow office had been carried out with the aid of the Soviet authorities. Soviet officials also arranged that parcels sent by the Joint Distribution Committee from its Teheran warehouse to individual Polish Jews in Russia be re-directed to the repatriates in Poland. If the Jews to whom the parcels have been sent have in the meantime left Poland, they will remain with the Warsaw Central Jewish Committee. About 3,500 parcels have already reached Warsaw. Many thousands are still in the post offices in the USSR, especially in Uzbekistan, where most of the Polish Jews were concentrated prior to their repatriation.

Dr. Sfard also reported that the funds that remained in the treasury of the Moscow committee had been used to purchase Yiddish and Hebrew books, many of them rare volumes, which will be brought to Warsaw. The archives of the Moscow committee have been left in the Soviet capital under the supervision of R.Gerber, a Jewish historian, who is now preparing a study on the life of the Polish Jews in the USSR during the war years.