JDC Reports Agency Helped Rehabilitate Some 300,000 Jews in 1970

The Joint Distribution Committee helped rehabilitate more than 300,000 Jews in 25 countries in 1970, at a cost of more than $23 million, executive vice chairman Samuel L. Haber reported today. In his annual report, Haber declared that “Israel’s concern with its very existence since 1967 has placed a continuing task on JDC to assume additional responsibilities in areas other than that of the aged, handicapped and chronically ill immigrants.” The JDC, which is largely funded by the United Jewish Appeal, performed 90 percent of its 1970 relief chores in Israel, Europe and the Moslem countries, where the “repercussions” of the Six-Day War were strongest, Haber said. JDC efforts in Israel, he continued, accounted for around 38 percent of the over-all budget–nearly $9 million–and aided around 95,000 persons. Of that total, $6.2 million went for JDC/Malben aid to the aged, ill and handicapped; more than $1 million for subsidization of ORT (Organization for Rehabilitation Through Training) vocational programs, and $880,000 for support of religious institutions and cultural activities.

The principal project of JDC/Malben concerned its nine old-age homes and 100-bed geriatric hospital, which cared for 2,400 patients a month. In addition, JDC/Malben expanded its programs of subsidized or rent-free housing, health insurance, housekeeping help and day-care, involving 3,000 elderly persons and helped provide facilities to aid 6,000 handicapped children. In the religious and cultural areas last year, the JDC provided financial subsidies to 137 yeshivoth with 18,750 students; relief grants to more than 500 refugee rabbis; subsidies for research and publication projects; teacher training; more than 100 scholarships and fellowships, and vocational training for more than 38,000 persons. In Europe, Haber went on, the JDC helped more than 164,000 Jews last year spending nearly $3 million in Western Europe alone. Most of that aid, around $1 million, went for the care of transmigrants, he said, with the next-largest sum having aided more than 55,000 members of the French Jewish population, the only Jewish community in Western Europe that has grown since the end of World War II–from 175,000 to around 550,000. “A very large share of the (French Jewish) increase is comprised of North African families who have added greatly to the demands for welfare and rehabilitation services, coming as they do from underdeveloped countries where the economic and social status often left much to be desired,” Haber explained.

Eastern European programs of the JDC last year centered on Rumania, where the organization helped 17,000 needy Jews in the form of cash grants, winter and Passover aid, clothing and food packages and hot meals. Some 900 of Yugoslavia’s 7,000 Jews were assisted by the JDC last year, plus another 80,000 under the “Relief-in-Transit” program. As for the Moslem countries, the JDC continued operations in Morocco, Tunisia and Iran in 1970, aiding around 43,000 Jews, Haber reported. He noted that while the last 80 Jewish prisoners in Egypt were set free last year and pressures on Jews in other Arab and Moslem lands were lessened, such pressures “have by no means totally disappeared” and Jews are in a precarious position in Syria and Iraq. As JDC chairman Louis Broido commented in an introduction to the Haber report, “The year 1970 brought no abatement in the demands made on JDC by our fellow Jews in areas of distress around the world.” In another statement incorporated within Haber’s report, Jack D. Weiler, chairman of the JDC National Council, said the organization’s efforts were aimed at “strengthening the State of Israel by aiding in the solution of human problems and needs in Israel by assisting in the rescue, relief and rehabilitation of distressed Jews in other countries.”