A $30,000 grant to provide housing loans to Jewish earthquake victims in Volo, Greece, was announced today by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The housing loans are to be utilized for the repair or reconstruction of Jewish family residences and the construction of apartments for Jewish tenants to replace dwellings destroyed by the earthquakes which earlier this year struck down the Thessalian town of Volo with its 300 Jewish inhabitants, all of them Nazi victims.
The Central Council of Jewish Communities in Greece has undertaken to match the grant of the Claims Conference by providing the sum of $20,000 from local sources. Arrangements have been completed with the Central Council for the administration of the housing program, in which the Athens Jewish Loan Society, originally established in 1945 by the Joint Distribution Committee is expected to participate.
The Conference grant is a part of the consolidated program for the aid of the earthquake victims, to which it is expected that the JDC and the Jewish Colonization Association will also make a joint contribution of $35,000 which the Athens Jewish Loan Society will also handle. These funds are in addition to those which Greek national and local governments are making available as well as the sums to be contributed by individual beneficiaries of the housing loans.
When the earthquakes struck earlier this year, the JDC provided immediate emergency aid to the Jews made homeless by the catastrophe. Last year it provided similar aid when a quake visited the very same region in Northern Greece destroying the homes and the economic future of several hundred Jewish residents who are Nazi victims. The Conference grant of $30,000 is related to its aid program for the rehabilitation of Jewish communities which fell victim to the Nazi occupation. The Volo community has suffered a two-fold catastrophe being overtaken by a natural disaster just when the rebuilding of its communal life following the Nazi occupation had begun to take effect.
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