Jews in Europe Get $8,000,000 Annually from J.d.c., Claims Conference

The Joint Distribution Committee and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany have made allocations averaging $8,000,000 annually during the last three years for Jewish needs on the European continent, it was reported here today at the conclusion of a conference of Jewish community organization heads in 12 European countries convoked by the JDC.

At the same time, Moses A. Leavitt, executive vice chairman of the JDC and an official of the Claims Conference, told the parley that the question facing European Jews was no longer the survival of individual Jews but the survival of Jewish traditional, social and cultural institutions. “In planning your community structures,” he said to the conferees, “you must give first consideration to this question of Jewish survival because whatever you build will be meaningless if there are no Jews in the future to use the structure you build. We do not want to erect monuments. We want to help maintain institutions that will make the Jewish community richer and fuller and, we hope, more Jewish,” he concluded.

Charles Jordan, acting JDC director general, asserted that the aims of the JDC and of the Claims Conference were identical “to assist in the rehabilitation of the Jewish communities and to help them in their efforts to restore themselves to positions of strength and security.” Saul Kagan, Claims Conference secretary, warned that the availability of Claims Conference funds was limited and that since the organization hopes to make lasting contributions with limited funds it is “focusing its attention more and more on the granting of special one-time contributions and less on current maintenance.”