Charles H. Jordan, veteran social service executive, was today named acting director-general for overseas operations of the Joint Distribution Committee. The announcement was made by Edward M. M. Warburg, JDC chairman. In his new responsibilities, Mr. Jordan succeeds Moses W. Beckelman, JDC director-general who died suddenly of a heart attack on December 10. Mr. Jordan had served since 1951 as assistant director-general.
Mr. Jordan, a charter member of the American Association of Social Workers, is now serving his second term as president of the Standing Conference of Voluntary Agencies Working for Refugees. He was born in Philadelphia in 1908, and received his education at the University of Berlin and the Pennsylvania and New York Schools of Social Work.
After six years of social work activity in the United States, he joined the JDC staff in 1941 as director for the Caribbean area with headquarters in Havana, Cuba. In 1943 he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, rejoining JDC at the end of the war as director of the agency’s Far Eastern activities. From his headquarters in Shanghai, Mr. Jordan supervised a program of relief, rehabilitation and migration aid for 15,000 European refugees. In 1948 he was called to Paris to head the JDC emigration department; and in 1951 he was named assistant director-general a post which he held until the present time.
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