J.D.C. Will End Aid to Jews in Yugoslavia by Jan. 1. Paris Directors Parley Hears

The Joint Distribution Committee will withdraw its aid from the Jewish community in Yugoslavia by Jan. 1, it was announced today at the conference here of J.D.C. directors in 18 European and North African countries.

It was explained that the present Jewish population of Yugoslavia has been reduced sufficiently–principally through the migration of Yugoslav Jews to Israel–to permit the J.D.C. to take this step. The J.D.C. took this action previously in Bulgaria, where the bulk of the Jewish community also proceeded to the Jewish state.

In a report presented by Frederick C. White, J.D.C. director in Yugoslavia, it was disclosed that 60 percent of the Yugoslav Jewish population has left for Israel since the end of the war. The present Jewish community comprises 5,500 persons who are generally self-sustaining, he added.

Emphasizing that there has been “cooperation and consideration by the Yugoslav Government,” especially in facilitating the emigration of Jews from the country, Mr. White urged that large shipments of medicine be allocated to the remaining Jews in Yugoslavia by the J.D.C. He disclosed that the final contingent of Israel-bound Jews–numbering some 1,500 persons–would leave for the Jewish state by the end of this year from the port of Rijeka.

Conditions among the Jews in North Africa are “tragic, but not hopeless,” Mrs. Helen Benatar and Morris Laub, J.D.C. directors in that area, reported to the parley. Stressing the need for extended medical aid and vocational training programs to the Jewish community in that area, they said: “When these men, women and children leave the wretched squalor in which they live and come to a place where they can walk in the sun, the results are amazing.”