Charles Jordan, overseas director general of the Joint Distribution Committee, warned today that welfare agencies in France, including the Jewish agencies, will face a formidable relief burden when special French Governmental grants to Algerian repatriates are ended on July 1.
Mr. Jordan, who is also chairman of the governing board of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies, based his statement on a report from the JDC representative in Marseilles. The report cited critical housing shortages in France for the newcomers and the difficulties of fitting the Algerian newcomers into French employment patterns. Nearly 180, 000 North African Jews have come to France as refugees, most of them from Algeria in advance of that country becoming independent last July.
The Jewish welfare programs are administered by the Fonds Social Juif Unifie and financed jointly with the JDC. This year, the two agencies set up a budget of $5,000,000 for 1963 but this sum, Mr. Jordan reported, would be far from enough to meet the needs.
Mr. Jordan emphasized that the July 1 cutoff date for government grants will probably bring vastly large burdens to voluntary welfare agencies “but it will bring special problems to the Jewish agencies. ” He said that about 15 percent of the repatriates are Jewish and they have swelled the local Jewish population by more then 40 percent. ” When one adds to this the fact that more than 50, 000 Jews from other North African countries–who are not entitled to any government grants–have entered France during the past three years, one begins to see what a formidable problem faces us, ” he stressed.
“There is every indication that in one area alone, that of cash relief, there will be at least 2, 000 cases added to the 3, 600 now on Jewish relief rolls in France–a contingency that was not anticipated when the JDC and the FSJU set up the $5, 000, 000 budget for the 1963 program, ” he declared.
He also pointed out that in addition to the housing and welfare needs affecting all repatriates, there were specific Jewish needs which had swelled to large proportions “and have swamped every Jewish facility in France.” This, he added, is natural and understandable when it is realized that synagogues, religious schools, community centers, homes for the aged, children’s homes, day care centers and fresh air camps, set up for a community of 300, 000 must now serve a population of 500, 000.
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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.
