The Joint Distribution Committee last year contributed $300,000–greater than the aggregate contributions from all other countries–for the rehabilitation of the Jews in Germany, bringing to almost $1,000,000 the total expended from 1933 through 1935.
This was shown today in the annual report of the committee’s activities in Germany, by Joseph C. Hyman, executive director. It contains a foreword by Felix M. Warburg, honorary chairman, and constitutes the first of four reports on J.D.C. work in Poland, Eastern Europe and the countries harboring German refugees during 1935.
“The past three years,” Mr. Hyman declares, “have increasingly drawn upon the resources of the German Jews themselves. Their means are rapidly being drained. They are forced to look for assistance from Jews abroad in ever greater measure…If 400,000 Jews still in Germany are not to die, new strength must come from abroad. That strength, to a large degree, must come from the Jews of America.”
Emigration of Jews from Germany during 1935 through organizations operating under the Central Committee for Relief and Reconstruction, which the J.D.C. in cooperation with Jewish leaders in the Reich helped organize, reached 16,524. Emigrants helped by organizations subverted by the J.D.C. during the three-year period totalled 65,144, the report said.
In 1935, 3,982 persons were assisted to emigrate to Palestine; 9,998 of foreign birth helped either to leave Germany for their native lands or native Germans helped to move from one German city to another; 2,544 assisted to emigrate to European and overseas countries, including 927 to European countries and 1,617 to North and South America and South Africa.
The report held rigid immigration laws the chief obstacle to large scale emigration, adding that since European countries were still suffering from economic depressions, the migration movement was chief centers.
The Central Committee extended vocational retraining centers during 1935 to teach Jews trades still open to them in Germany and to retrain youths between 18 and 25 to meet vocational requirements of overseas countries. Farming and agricultural training became the predominant course, and 72 per cent of the men and 80 per cent of the women undergoing training in Germany chose farming. In training centers outside Germany, 84 per cent of the men and 55 per cent of the women chose farming.
At the beginning of 1935, 4,005 persons were undergoing training in centers in Germany, Denmark, France, Holland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Memel. From January through December 2,133 either completed their courses or were enabled to emigrate.
An increasing number of Jewish children were forced out of state schools, and 20,000 between the ages of 6 and 19–double the number cared for in 1934–attended special schools. Aided by J.D.C. funds, the school committee spent 543,650 reichsmarks for education, including 374,028 reichsmarks for children and the remainder for adult education and supplementary work. The committee must now care for 44,000 to be removed from government schools during the year.
An estimated 62,000 families–about 45 per cent of the Jewish population–sought economic aid from various agencies of the Central Committee during 1935. Special winter relief programs organized by Jewish communities after Jews were barred from general relief aided 75,000 Jews.
The report describes extension of the loan bank system, and, in general assistance in the five major fields of rehabilitation–emigration, welfare aid, economic aid, education and vocation training.
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