Plans for Jdc’s 1945 Drive for $46,570,000 Mapped out at Meeting of Campaign Committee

Plans for the Joint Distribution Committee’s 1945 drive for $46,570,000 were mapped out here today at a meeting of the JDC’S National Campaign Organization Committee at the Hotel Biltmore. The quota for the campaign was approved by the committee after speakers listed the organization’s needs and Isidor Coons, campaign director, outlined the national plans.

Rabbi Jonah B. Wise was elected national chairman of the campaign. He will be assisted by Paul Baerwald, JDC Chairman, who will be honorary chairman of the drive, and fifteen Jewish leaders throughout the nation. In addition, a nation-wide executive board of some fifty members was elected to assist in the conduot of the campaign. Some three thousand local JDC campaign leaders will also aid in the drive.

Rabbi Wise told the gathering that in its thirty years of existence, during which it has served as the principal American relief-giving agency for Jews overseas, the JDC has never had to face a task as enormous as this year’s. At the same time, Joseph C. Hyman, Executive Vice-Chairman of the JDC, told how the organization is currently providing emergency assistance in some sixteen countries in Europe and North Africa, aids in emigration to Palestine, and assists in other areas affected by the global war.

Rabbi Wise said the nearly one million Jews needing help make up the greater part of an estimated million and a half Jews still in continental Europe who survived Hitler’s planned destruction of the Jewish population there. He stated: “To neglect those who escaped Hitler’s policy of extermination is to give tacit approval to his monstrous plan for the total destruction of the nine million Jews in Europe before the rise of Nazism.”

FUND GOAL WILL ONLY MEET PARTIAL NEEDS OF EUROPE’S JEWS

The national campaign chairman said the amount sought by the JDC will cover only the partial requirements of the displaced, stateless and suffering Jews in Europe’s liberated areas. He said thousands can turn only to the JDC for the food, shelter; clothing and medical help they need for survival. Stateless Jews are not being afforded Assistance by the reconstituted governments of several liberated countries, and UNRRA relief operations have still to be set in motion in several areas where the greatest number of Jews remain.

Joseph C. Hyman, JDC Executive Vice-Chairman, who was named one of the vice-chairman of the drive, told the Biltmore meeting that the greatest number of Jews still alive in Europe, and requiring the most assistance, are in four countries. JDC representatives abroad estimate that 170,000 Jews remain in France, 290,000 in Roumania, 280,000 in Hungary, and 45,000 in Bulgaria. Extensive aid programs are already in operation in these and other areas. Mr. Hyman said that only a possible forty thousand of the three million Jews who once lived in Poland are still alive there, but JDC aid is going to them and to Polish Jews who are now in the Soviet Union. One hundred tons of food and clothing have already been shipped to Poland, and Soviet authorities have granted JDC permission to ship an additional 250 tons to Lublin.

As still another example of how the JDC operates to give relief, Mr. Hyman told how the first train-load of supplies for Jews in Budapest was on its way from Humania to the Hungarian capital within twenty four hours after its liberation by Soviet troops. He said that thousands of children form part of the total group that is being helped abroad. In France, a JDC supported organization, the OSE, cares for some three thousand children. In all 8,000 children were cared for by the OSE, a French organization, during the Vichy regime and following occupation. About three thousand have now been reunited with one parent, or both.

Those who attended the JDC Campaign Organization committee meeting in addition to the organization’s officers and directors included: Jerome H. Kohn; Hartford; Milton W. King, Washington, D.C.; Lazure L. Goodman, Indianapolis; George Alpert, Boston; George W. Farber, Worcester, Mass.; George Abrash, Paterson, N. J.; Bernard Alexander, Trenton, N. J.; Mrs. Louis Broido, New York; A. L. Malkenson, New York; Edward A. Norman, New York; Alexander E. Holstein, Syracuze; N. Y.; Joseph M. Berne, Cleveland; Mortiz M. Gottlieb, Allentown, Pa.; Albert Lieberman, Philadelphia; Louis Caplan, Pittsburgh; and Leslie L. Jacobs, Dallas.

The list of campaign officers includes; National Chairman: Rabbi Jonah B. Wise; and, Honorary Chairmen: Paul Baerwald – New York; James H. Becker – Chicago; Eddie Cantor – Beverly Hills; Max Epstein – Chicago; Hon. Phillip Forman – Trenton, N. J.; Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof – Pittsburgh; Rabbi Solomon Goldman – Chicago; Henry Ittleson – New York; Rabbi Leo Jung – New York; Edmund I. Kaufman – Washington; D. C.; Henry Monsky – Omaha; James N. Rosenberg – New York; William J. Shroder – Cincinnati; Hon. Max C. Sloss – San Francisco; Mrs. Roger W. Straus – New York; Mrs. Felix Warburg – New York; and Henry Wineman – Detroit, Mich. In addition, thirteen co-chairmen and fourteen vice-chairman from all parts of the country were elected and Al Paul Lefton of Philadephia, I. Edwin Goldwasser of New York and Alexander A. Landesco of New York were named secretary, treasurer and associate treasurer, respectively.