Samuel Haber, honorary executive vice president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, which he served for 37 years, died in Akron, Ohio, yesterday at the age of 81, the JDC announced here today. Funeral arrangements will be announced tomorrow.
Haber joined the JDC staff in 1947 as director for Germany where he developed programs for more than 200,000 displaced persons. They were instrumental in the rescue, rehabilitation and eventual emigration of tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors.
In 1954, Haber was sent to Morocco to organize aid for the 240,000-member Jewish community. In 1957, when after a lapse of seven years the JDC was permitted to resume its activities in Poland, he was asked to develop a welfare program for the impoverished remnant of that country’s Jewish community while continuing his tasks in Morocco.
Haber was assigned in 1958 to the European headquarters of the JDC in Geneva as assistant director general. He was transferred to the JDC’s New York headquarters in 1964 and in 1967 was elected executive vice chairman. He served in that capacity until 1976.
In recent years he served as national chairman of the Hebrew University Associates Program and as a Trustee of the Interfaith Hunger Appeal which he helped establish in 1978.
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