A representative of the Joint Distribution Committee will be included in the delegation which the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration will send to liberated Poland for the purpose of studying the relief needs of the local population, it was announced today by Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, European chairman of the J.D.C., ct a press luncheon held at the Murray Hill Hotel.
Dr. Schwartz also revealed that Jewish relief groups in France who conducted underground relief activities during the German occupation had been provided by the Joint Distribution Committee with 350 million francs for aid and rescue work. About eight thousand Jews, he said, have been taken from the Balkan countries to Palestine with the J.D.C. covering ninety percent of the cost of their rescue and transportation. The other ten percent was covered chiefly by funds contributed by individual Jews in Palatine. For this rescue work alone, the J.D.C. appropriated $3,000,000, in the past few months.
The Joint Distribution Committee, Dr. Schwartz continued, is now sending 10,000 food-and-clothing packages a month to individual Polish Jews in Russia, “Now that the Russian government has agreed to permit an UNRRA mission to enter Poland for the purpose of surveying relief needs in the battle-scarred country, we have the opportunity to learn at first hand the status of Poland’s Jews,” Dr. Schwartz said, adding that the J.D.C. will have the right to report to the Joint Distribution Committee via UNRRA on all matters of special interest to Jews and to the Committee.
Dr. Scinwartz disclosed that the J.D.C. is taking steps on behalf of the Jews of Rumania and Bulgaria similar to those already taken in other liberated territories. “The work of rescue and relief now under may in liberated Italy indicates some of the problems which the J.D.C. will face in other areas as they are freed,” he said. He expressed the hope that soon J.D.C. will have its own American personnel in France to coordinate the work of the local committees. The J.D.C. for the first nine months of this year appropriated more than $16,600,000 for its work of rescue, relief and rehabilitation, he pointed cut.
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