Joseph Meyerhoff of Baltimore, general chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, told the 100 members of the UJA Study Mission today that “much more money will be required in 1964” than the UJA raised in 1963. He indicated that the goal of the 1964 campaign was expected to exceed substantially the $60, 000, 000 raised in 1963 for domestic and overseas welfare needs.
He spoke after mission members heard a series of reports on the needs of Jews in France, Italy and eastern Europe on the second day of the four-day session in Rome. He asked the mission members to anticipate their forthcoming visit to Israel, which will be a ten-day tour, in the same sense of dedicating themselves to a process of study. He added that “only if you intend to understand in depth the whole vast problem of relief and rescue will you be able to interpret it to your fellow-Jews back home.”
One of the reports presented today indicated that in France during the past year, organizations operating with subventions from the American Joint Distribution Committee met 80, 000 requests for welfare services of various types for North African settlers. The report showed that 15 months after the influx of more than 100, 000 Algerian Jews into France, only 20 to 25 percent could be considered as adequately housed and employed and otherwise integrated into French society.
It was estimated that of the other 75, 000, one-quarter would succeed in adapting themselves fairly well within the next year or two with the help of the massive subsistence and training program the JDC is supporting in France. The future of the remaining Jewish newcomers–more than 55, 000 persons–hangs in the balance at present, the critical factors being jobs and housing which are rarely to be found in the same locality, the mission was told.
Reports on Italy indicated it was becoming of increasing importance as a center for transmigration of Jewish refugees now leaving eastern Europe and North Africa to resettle in Israel, France, North America, South America and Australia. The mission members were told that some 2, 500 migrants would be passing through Rome, Genoa, Trieste and Naples in the next month or so enroute to countries of final destination.
The mission members attended a dinner tonight at the Pallazo Ruspoli at which they heard reports from Baron Guy de Rothschild, head of the Fonds Social Juif Unifie, the major French Jewish welfare agency, and Moses A. Leavitt, executive vice-chairman of the JDC. Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, UJA executive vice-chairman, presided at the dinner.
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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.
