The Joint Distribution Committee has set up an office in Algeria to provide various welfare services to the needy Jews still remaining in Algeria, Charles Jordan, director general of the JDC reported here to day after a visit to the newly independent Moslem country.
Stopping in Vienna en route back to his offices in Geneva, the JDC director said there was no Jewish communal structure left in Algeria and that only two “heroic” rabbis had remained to look after their flocks.
He said it was still not known how many Jews were left after the mass exodus in the months preceding Algerian independence day on July 1. He cited estimates of 25, 000 to 60,000 Jews still in Algeria of the original 125,000 Jews in that country when it was under French administration.
He reported that more than 1, 000 children had been provided transportation to France in the two weeks since the first JDC and United Hias Service representatives arrived in Algeria. He said various payments to Jewish aged and handicapped which were formerly handled through social welfare agencies of Jewish communities had been resumed under JDC auspices and that some 1,200 Jewish men and women were currently receiving such aid.
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