Ten years after V-E Day, the aid of the Joint Distribution Committee is still required by Jewish communities in 25 countries, Moses A. Leavitt, JDC executive vice-chairman reported today in connection with the 41st annual meeting of the organization which will take place on Thursday.
Reviewing JDC activities for 1955, Mr. Leavitt said that the number of Jews dependent upon JDC for full or partial support during the year ran into the tens of thousands. He estimated that during the past five years the number of those requiring JDC assistance varied between 160,000 and 180,000 each year. “This number was varying only slightly as new disturbances caught up in their wake smaller or larger groups in Eastern Europe, in Germany, in North Africa or elsewhere,” he stated.
“In Europe, in Israel, in North Africa, the cries for JDC’s help are voiced in many ways, in many languages,” Mr. Leavitt said in his report. “But the cry is easy to recognize, for the language of need is everywhere the same. In every tongue and every dialect there is a word–or one can be found–for bread and shoes and even penicillin. And for those thousands in need of, and unable to get, bread and shoes and penicillin, no tomorrow is sure, no day dawns without a new measure of anxiety and of questions. For more than 40 years JDC has–with the support of the American Jewish community–continued its search for the answers. In the days to come the search will go on,” he declared.
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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.
