The Joint Distribution Committee intends to spend at least $250,000 to provide matzos for Jews in German-occupied countries, for entry of which the Nazi authorities have given permission, it was revealed today by Morris C. Troper, JDC European director.
Troper, who arrived from Lisbon on Tuesday, described the Jewish situation and JDC relief activities in Europe at press conferences for the English and Yiddish press, one presided over by Vice-Chairman Jonah B. Wise and the other by Executive Vice-Chairman Joseph C. Hyman.
The matzos will be purchased in Yugoslavia and Hungary and, with the permission of the respective governments, shipped to Jewish relief communities in Poland and other Nazi-controlled areas, Troper said. In the course of the press conferences, he stated:
In unoccupied France, more than 50,000 refugees, about 35,000 of them Jewish, are held in 20 internment camps under the most trying conditions. There have been days in which 20 to 30 suicides have been recorded. Two thousand children are among the interned refugees. In the Gurs camp, where 15,000 Jews are held, there are 1,200 persons over 70 years of age, one of them 106 years old. Deaths from disease, privation and malnutrition reach the total of 400 monthly. There have been two typhoid epidemics.
Many of the people in these camps are the ones least likely to survive. Principally people who had never known privation before, they are the ones whose resistance, both moral and physical, is the lowest. There are also some 50,000 technically at liberty in the free zone, who are being helped by the J.D.C. so that they may escape being interned as well.
In occupied France, there are still some 50,000 Jews in Paris; 25,000 to 30,000 in other parts of occupied France. Theirs supplies and funds are gone. Nazi-sponsored anti-Semitic legislation makes it impossible for them to work. Soup kitchens, established by the J.D.C. serve one meal a day to 5,000 persons.
The Spanish border is tightly closed to all but the few holders of legitimate passports. The great traffic in spurious passports centering in Marseille is at an end. At least 2,000 refugees have been detained by the authorities and interned in camps.
In German-occupied Poland, anti-Semitic laws and the ghettoizing of the people have reduced the Jewish population to the verge of starvation. They cannot even trade between themselves as none has the money to buy. They are so poor that stories of people going to places where they can simply smell food cooking are frequent and authenticated. The J.D.C. is functioning through a network of 2,000 institutions of aid. There are 300 feeding stations, 900 medical and child care institutions, 150 monetary help agencies. In one way or another 600,000 are daily being helped; 300,000 fed, 150,000 given monetary aid, 40,000 given medical service, 40,000 children cared for.
Portugal has forbidden entrance to any without a legitimate visa for another country. When the first influx began, the authorities were more lenient, and 10,000 Jewish refugees came in a wave to a country that had but a 100 in May of 1940. Today 6,000 of the 10,000 are still in Portugal, harried by the rife rumor of German troops at the border. They are not permitted to work. There are no camps for them. For Portugal is not a refugee country and will not recognize anything of a permanent nature for these unwelcome guests. A J.D.C. soup kitchen is in operation. Day by day, more of them are reduced to relief as their limited funds are exhausted.
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