Activities of the Joint Distribution Committee during 1939, in behalf of German refugees and Jews in Germany and German-held territory, are described in a preliminary report made public today by Joseph C. Hyman, executive vice-chairman of the committee.
During 1939, Hyman revealed, the J.D.C. appropriated $978,102 for aid to Jews in Germany proper. These funds were made available to the central Jewish welfare organization in Germany which during the course of the year suffered a steady decline of income from local sources because of the growing pauperization of the Jews who remain in the country. Impoverishment is growing at so rapid a rate, Hyman declared, that relief requirements are expected to be 20 percent higher in 1940 than in 1939. The emigration of young people is leaving a residue of aged people who must be cared for in institutions. In the last five months of 1939, 14 Jewish homes for the aged were either newly established or expanded.
In Austria, Hyman said, more than half of the Jewish population is dependent upon relief. The once sizeable community of 180,000 Jews is now reduced to 55,000. Approximately 30,000 persons are fed daily at 17 free kitchens conducted by the Jewish community and 35,000 receive other forms of relief each month. The J.D.C. appropriated $900,000 in aid of the Jews of Austria during 1939.
Under the constant threat of expulsion, the 70,000 Jews in the Protectorate lived in a state of panic, the report declared. To help them, the J.D.C. expended $155,000 during 1939 for relief work, emigration aid and vocational training. In Slovakia, the J.D.C. expended $158,000 for welfare and economic aid to Jews. The J.D.C. also spent $54,000 on behalf of the Jews in Danzig. Of a Jewish population of 10,500, some 1,600 Jews still remain in that city.
In conducting this program within German territory, Hyman pointed out, no American dollars were sent into these countries. Help was extended through financial clearance arrangements effected with the approval of the authorities.
About 170,000 refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia have temporary asylum in western European countries, chiefly France, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy, Hyman estimated. In rendering assistance to this group during 1939, the J.D.C. expended $3,266,000. While the burden of caring for these people has been shared by the J.D.C. with local refugee committees in each of the countries concerned, the former has had to assume a larger proportion of the responsibility since the outbreak of the war, because resources of local groups have been drained by national requirements.
Assistance to refugees rendered by the J.D.C. in Latin America, Shanghai, and the Philippines, where approximately 100,000 have found opportunities for permanent settlement resulted in the expenditure of $600,000 during 1939. With the guidance of the J.D.C. local refugee committees have been established in fifteen South and Central American lands to speed the adjustment of the refugee immigrants and to enable them quickly to become self-supporting citizens of their new homelands.
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