In two years, relief supplies valued at %5,000,000 have been furnished in the form of food parcels to more than two hundred thousand wardisplaced Jews from Poland and Baltic Europe now in Asiatic Russia, Charles Passman, director of the Middle East program of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, said today. Mr. Passman, an American citizen whose visit to this country termimates an absence of 17 years, arrived in New York last week from Palestine.
The food parcel program was made possible, Mr. Passman told a press conference, through arrangements made by the Joint Distribution Committee with Soviet and other government authorities in 1943. Despite wartime supply difficulties, he established commodity stockpiles in Teheran from which 10,000 food parcels monthly have gone into the Soviet Union for delivery to individuals and families. A J.D.C, service unit of 70 persons is stationed in Teheran to handle the shipment of the parcels.
Mr. Passman also revealed that Teheran has been used as the base for furnishing bulk supplies for the surviving Jews in Poland. He said that the J.D.C. is now making arrangements to ship relief parcels to individuals in the Baltic area, Bessarabia, Bukovina and other places.
One by-product of the parcel program, according to Mr. Passman, is that through it the J.D.C. has helped reunite thousands of scattered family members among the Jewish refugees in Asiatic Russia. A central file is kept in Jerusalem of all recipients of the packages. This file provides information for inquiring husbands, wives and children of their near ones of whom they have lost track.
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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.
