More than $1,600,000 will be provided this year by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to Jewish communal and central welfare organizations in 21 lands to enable them to carry on a program of cash relief aid to needy Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, it was announced today. The Joint Distribution Committee is also participating in these programs in many countries.
“Some 90 percent of the 12,000 persecutees expected to receive cash relief benefits this year from organizations in receipt of Conference funds, reside in the lands under former Nazi occupation,” the announcement said. “The needs of Nazi victims in these lands are considered the most urgent, a great number are aged and ill, and hence about $1,975,000 of the cash relief funds will be expended in France, Germany and Italy and an additional $330,000 in Austria, Belgium, Greece, Holland, Norway and Yugoslavia. Many beneficiaries are recipients in addition of medical aid, goods in kind and related forms of assistance which Conference funds are also providing.”
Outside of Europe, Conference aid is granted for cash relief programs conducted for the benefit of needy Nazi victims in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Australia by Jewish central welfare organizations. The Conference allocations are intended to aid in the resettlement of recently arrived immigrants, above all, especially in Australia, Brazil and Uruguay.
“In the lands under former Nazi occupation the urgent needs of displaced persons have been on the decrease recently, by virtue of emigration to overseas lands or of economic absorption in the countries where they now live,” the Conference statement revealed. “The needs of Nazi victims belonging to the settled Jewish populations in these lands can therefore be granted greater consideration, especially in aiding the local communities to provide more adequate relief standards. These communities are less able than those else where to provide for these needs out of their own resources,” the statement emphasized.
The Claims Conference in each of the two preceding years provided the organizations in 21 lands with sums for cash relief aid comparable to this year. The combined expenditure for the three year period is expected to attain about $5,000,000. The cash relief grants, which represent the greatest single expenditure for any Conference program, are supplementary in great part to aid contributed by the Jewish communal and central welfare organizations in the various lands and by national and local governments.
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.
