An emergency grant of $25,000 to provide immediate food and housing for 2,500 Kurdish Jews who recently fled to Teheran to escape anti-Jewish excesses in north-west Iran has been made by the Joint Distribution Committee, following an on-the-spot inspection of the refugees’ plight by Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, its director-general.
Announcement of the grant was made by Edward M.M. Warburg, J.D.C. chairman, at a meeting of the agency’s executive committee held today at the Hotel Commodore here. Mr. Warburg revealed that Dr. Schwartz, who arrived in Teheran last Thursday, cabled that the refugees were “in a deplorable condition facing starvation and epidemics.”
According to Dr. Schwartz, about 1,800 of the refugees are camped in a Jewish cemetery outside Teheran, while some 700 are crowded in the local synagogue. Native Jews of Teheran, at a meeting held Saturday night, undertook to raise an additional $25,000 to add to the J.D.C.’s emergency contribution for the refugees. In his cable Dr. Schwartz reported that the total $50,000 will cover the most essential needs of Jewish refugees for a period of only sixty days. “The only solution to the plight of the Kurdish Jews in Teheran is their quick removal to Israel,” he said.
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