The Joint Distribution Committee today issued its 1952 annual report revealing that it spent $23,647,252 last year for aid to Jews in about 20 countries and that a minimum of $25,500,000 will be required this year for the JDC relief program.
In an outline of JDC relief, resettlement and rehabilitation programs during the past year, Moses A. Leavitt, JDC executive vice-chairman, declared that in 1952 it became clear that the period of mass emergency and mass assistance was giving way to new and varied individual problems. “Increasingly JDC began to emphasize those aspects of its programs which would guarantee aid for longer periods, and which would also move Jewish communities in many areas closer to the day when they could meet their own problems with their own resources,” he pointed out.
The report by Mr. Leavitt noted that despite the achievements scored by JDC on behalf of hundreds of thousands overseas since the end of World War II, some 185,000 men, women and children will be in urgent need of outside assistance during 1953. During 1953 JDC must: 1. Expand its Malben facilities in Israel to care for thousands of aged, sick and handicapped immigrants still in reception camps or on waiting lists; 2. Extend the feeding, medical and other assistance in Moslem lands; 3. Press for final solution for the large residual group of DP’s either through emigration assistance or through adjustment aid for more normal lives.
A report in the JDC summary by Edward M.M. Warburg, JDC chairman and UJA general chairman, declared: “We must reconcile ourselves to the thought that for tens of thousands still requiring our aid there are no short-term solutions. As JDC has moved from mass assistance programs to more and more individualized programs, the problems have become more complicated and more difficult to solve.”
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.
