The Joint Distribution Committee said today that “the only truth in the statement” by the Warsaw Communist youth newspaper, Sztandar Mlodych, attacking the relief and rehabilitation agency as an instrument of espionage “is that the Joint Distribution Committee was asked to terminate its activities in Poland at the end of last year.” The statement, made by Samuel L. Haber, executive vice-chairman of the JDC, noted that “the accusations against the JDC are all the more astounding because of the Polish Government’s recent acknowledgement of JDC’s contributions and assistance.”
Mr. Haber referred to a letter last August from J. Rutkiewicz, Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, expressing thanks for JDC activities in Poland which, he said. had “helped in the vocational retraining of a part of the Jewish population in our country” and “has facilitated their further independent work within the framework of our constantly developing economy.” The letter pointed out that “because of this situation, I wish to inform you that we consider the period of the JDC’s activity in Poland, which has lasted until now, as sufficient because the goals which have guided them have been reached.”
Mr. Haber pointed out that at that time, JDC was assisting some 14,000 Jews out of 20,000 in the country, at a cost of about $500,000 a year. Despite the feeling that Jews in Poland still needed assistance, he said, ‘JDC was left no option but to terminate its assistance programs in Poland at the end of 1967.”
The JDC executive stressed that “JDC, in its work of relief and rehabilitation of Jewish victims of war and persecution, has scrupulously refrained at all times from political activities. It has never deviated from its principle of exclusive adherence to its humanitarian role. Wherever it has carried out its humanitarian programs, it has continued to guard zealously its complete independence from all political movements general as well as specifically Jewish,” he declared.
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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.
