The ground work has been laid for intensified activities by the Joint Distribution Committee in the Middle East, including the relief and transportation of refugees and the sending of additional parcels to Polish-Jewish refugees in Russia, it was disclosed here today by Dr. Joseph Schwartz, European director of the JDC, who returned from Turkey this week. Dr. Schwartz is leaving for North Africa today, from where he will go to JDC headquarters in Lisbon.
In an interview with a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent Dr. Schwartz reported that the JDC is planning to establish a permanent representation in the Middle East to deal with general relief problems and to secure firsthand information concerning the Jewish communities of occupied Europe. To this end, he said, conferences have been held with the JDC advisory committee here, under the chairmanship of Dr. Judah L. Magnes, and with the Jewish Agency, the Histadruth, the Mizrachi, the Agudas Israel, the Chief Rabbis of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and other responsible bodies.
Among the concrete results already achieved from these conferences, the JDC director declared, are provisions for the transfer of 1,000 Yemenite Jews from Aden to Palestine. Six hundred Jews from Yemen have already been brought here with JDC assistance. Transportation has also been arranged for 1,000 Jewish refugees in Turkey who wish to enter Palestine and the JDC has allotted funds for the transportation of Jewish refugee children in the Balkans, should they be allowed to emigrate.
More packages are being shipped to the refugees in Russia, Dr. Schwartz asserted, and plans are being made to expand this service in order that the maximum number of refugees will be reached. He said that efforts are being made to secure food and clothing which can be shipped by way of Iran or other countries. Establishment of JDC offices in the Middle East, he concluded, will strengthen the efforts to bring the greatest possible amount of relief to the areas where the need is most acute.
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