In the past year, the JDC has resumed direct programs in the East European countries of Hungary and Czechoslo-vakia, according to Henry Taub, President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In his address to the JDC semi-annual meeting in New York recently, Taub said that the increasing JDC contact with the Jews of Eastern Europe is, in a sense, “an opening of windows, though of course, nothing can compensate for the closing doors and decreased emigration of Soviet Jews in recent months.”
He pointed out that less than a year after Hungarian authorities approved the re-establishment of the JDC assistance program, plans have been completed for a kosher kitchen to be dedicated in September which will provide 1,000 meals per day to the aged and needy Jews in that country. In addition the JDC program includes support for a day care center for the elderly, and a kindergarten for Orthodox Jewish children.
In Rumania, he said, JDC’s massive program of assistance to the Jews continued in cooperation with Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, with the full approval of the Rumanian government. Yugoslavia is the only Eastern European country where JDC’s assistance program has continued uninterrupted ever since the end of World War II, providing special assistance to the needy among the Jewish population of 7000.
Taub read a letter to the JDC Board meeting from the general secretary of the Czech Jewish community, where JDC only recently was able to reestablish its assistance program after years of absence in which he expressed official appreciation for the funds, religious supplies and kosher foods. For those familiar with the former attitude of the Czech government, this is an amazing turn-around, permitting the official relationship with an American Jewish relief organization, Taub said.
JDC BUDGET
Most gratifying of all, Taub continued, is the fact that the government of Poland, which forced the JDC to close operations in 1967, has now informed the JDC that they are ready to discuss re-establishing its operations for the remaining 7,000 Polish Jews, the vast majority of whom are aged and ill.
Ralph I. Goldman, JDC Executive Vice President, in presenting the JDC Budget to the meeting said that 33 percent of the operating budget of $40.3 million was devoted to relief and welfare. Jewish education, he added, is a close second at 23.8 percent; 17% for health services and care for the aged, and the balance for advanced education, manpower training and social development. In addition to the $40.3 million, most of which JDC receives from the United Jewish Appeal, it is anticipated that the U.S. government will provide approximately $16.4 million for care and maintenance of Soviet Jewish immigrants awaiting their visas in Rome.
AWARD TO SMOLAR
The meeting was the occasion for a special award given by JDC to Boris Smolar, editor-in-chief emeritus of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, who was described as JDC’s oldest living employe, having commenced his association with the worldwide Jewish relief agency in Poland in 1920, at the age of 23. At that time, Smolar, at the request of the JDC, provided emergency aid to Jewish orphans whose parents were killed during the post-World War I pogroms.
In making the award to Smolar, the JDC established a special fund to provide an annual Boris Smolar award to a journalism student writing about the situation of Jews overseas.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
