Relief Discussed by Hyman

Discussion by Joseph C. Hyman, Secretary of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, of paper presented by Morris D. Waldman on Sunday, May 27, 1934 at the National Conference of Jewish Social Service in Atlantic City, entitled “Problems Facing the Jews Throughout the World and Their Implications for American Jewry.”

The Joint Distribution Committee, which has been operating now for twenty years in Eastern and Central Europe, bears witness to Jewish distress and oppression to an extent not less acute and tragic than during the World War and the immediate post-War period. All reports substantiate a condition in many instances of unparalleled suffering and destitution. These conditions are due, not alone to the general and world wide collapse affecting all of the population, but also to the added tribulations visited upon our people through special disabilities, excesses, racial hostilities, economic boycotts and the progressive strangulation of Jewish opportunity for self-support-all of which have weakened the very foundations of their livelihood and sapped their courage and morale.

In Eastern Europe there are today virtually no Jews in the public service. Government monopolies have thrown out Jews by the thousands. Lawyers and doctors are handicapped severely. Discriminations are complained of in the collection of taxes, the granting of licenses for business, the regulation of artisans, the meagre appropriations from governments and municipalities to Jewish institutions. That is why today it is necessary to supplement the desperate efforts of the Jewish people who had achieved a measurable degree of self-support in the maintenance of their institutions of welfare and philanthropy, but who, in the last five years especially, have lost ground and are rapidly giving way under the increased pressure upon them.