Latest developments in Iran will be reported on at the annual meeting of the Joint Distribution Committee in New York Dec. 6, it was announced this week by Donald M. Robinson, JDC president. Michael Schneider, who took over as JDC director for Iran in August, will fly to New York to deliver a first-hand account of the current situation.
More than 100 members of the Board of Directors will attend the meeting, which will elect officers and adopt a budget and program for 1979. Ralph 1. Goldman, executive vice-president, will deliver a year-end report on JDC’s world-wide operations.
Another feature will be a report on the Jewish community of France by Baron Guy de Rothschild, president of the Fonds Social Juif Unifie (FSJU). Rothschild, who is the head of the French branch of the famous banking family, will receive the Ma’asim Tovim (Good Deeds) Award at a luncheon session.
The JDC has been conducting health, welfare and educational programs in Iran since 1949, Robinson said. These programs, which aid some 15,000 of the 80,000 Jews living in Iran, incurred expenditures of more than $1.5 million this year.
Rothschild was active in the resistance during World War 11 and served in the French army from 1939 to 1945. He served with Gen. Charles de Gaulle and entered Paris with the French army at its liberation. For his role in the war effort he was awarded the “Croix de Guerre.”
Rothschild was an active leader of the French Jewish community and helped it to recover from the devastating effects of the Nazi occupation. He served as President of the French Consistoire from the end of the war until 1967. He was one of the prime movers in the creation of the FSJU in 1950 with the help of the JDC. He was nominated president two years later and has served in that office for the past 25 years.
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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.
