The Joint Distribution Committee-sponsored international conference on relief and rehabilitation concluded here today following a report by J.D.C. European director Dr. Joseph Schwartz who stressed the need for contributing communities to coordinate their welfare organizations and for receiving communities to carry the burden of their own reconstruction programs. He also announced that the J.D.C. will need $75,000,000 in 1949.
Dr. Schwartz then reviewed the gradual shift in relief operations from Europe to North Africa, and pointed out that fund-raising programs had been set up in several Jewish communities in Europe.
Earlier, the tragedy of the 1,000,000 Jews living in North Africa and other Moslem countries was analyzed at the parley by J. Braunschwig, of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, reported on conditions in those countries. Describing the “incredible” extent of disease, poverty, illiteracy and “the terrible mortality rate,” he revealed that in the Casablanca ghetto 25 percent of all Jewish children die before they are one year old.
Assistance is essential to at least 75 percent of the 256,000 Jews in Morocco, 40 percent of the 140,000 Jews in Algeria, 60 percent of the 105,000 Jews in Tunisia and 80 percent of the 130,000 Jews in Iran, the Alliance representative declared. This year the J.D.C. has spent more than $1,000,000 to aid Jews in the Moslem countries, it was revealed. The Alliance provides educational opportunities for 46,000 Jewish children in the Moslem countries.
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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.
