Past Presidents Honored at 50th Anniversary of Conference of Jewish Social Welfare

A dinner honoring the past presidents of the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare was the main feature of last night’s activities at the 50th anniversary convention of the Conference, Among the past presidents who spoke at the affair, were Morris D. Waldman, a former executive director of the American Jewish Committee, Isadora Sobeloff, executive director of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit, and William J. Shroder, chairman of the board of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.

Mr. Waldman, a founder of the body and one of its first presidents, declared that “the higher the levels reached in welfare work, the less likely that the world will witness another recession to barbarism. In a real sense we social workers, by virtue of the very labors in which we are engaged, are among the peacemakers,” he added. Reviewing the progress of Jewish social work in the past half-century, Mr. Waldman recalled the problems of the early days of the Conference when Jewish immigrants were pouring into the United States at a tremendous rate. One of the greatest achievements of Jewish social work was to be found in the fact that in one decade–from 1901 to 1910–the immigrants were given a type of assistance which resulted in a reduction of the number who needed to apply for direct relief although the rate of immigration had doubled.

Mr. Waldman also spoke of the catastrophe of Nazism and the development which finally led to the establishment of the state of Israel. He also recalled the “generous” outpouring of assistance from American Jewry to the Jews of Europe. He traced this development from its early beginnings in 1904 when a campaign was launched to aid the sufferers of pogroms in Czarist Russia to today’s mighty effort in behalf of the DP’s.