(End note 1:
Most of this introductory
chapter is based on an unpublished manuscript by Herman Bernstein, "The
History of American Jewish Relief", written in 1928, now in the JDC
Library. Oscar Handlin: A Continuing Task (New York, 1964) and Herbert
Agar: The Saving Remnant (New York, 1960), have also been used).
[Palestine 1914: Persecution of
the Jews - ask for help by Henry Morgenthau for 50,000 $ at Jacob H.
Schiff]
In August 1914 a cable arrived in the office of Jacob H. Schiff, head
of the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. It had been sent by the
U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., and it asked that $
50,000 be sent to the Jews of Palestine, who were threatened with
persecution and hunger as a result of the hostile attitude of the
Turkish rulers of the country. The effect of World War I on the Jews of
Europe and the Middle East was coming home to American Jewry.
[American Jewish Committee AJC
1906 - Jacob H. Schiff organized the 50,000 $ for Palestine]
Schiff brought the matter to the attention of his friends at the
American Jewish Committee (AJC), founded in 1906 and dedicated not only
to the protection of Jewish civil and religious rights all over the
world, but also to an effort "to alleviate the consequences of
persecution and to afford relief from calamities affecting Jews,
wherever they occur." On August 31 the money was collected, with Schiff
and the Zionist Provisional Committee (in effect, Nathan Straus) giving
$ 12,500 each, and AJC voting the remaining $ 25,000.
[Jewry in the "USA": Spanish,
Portuguese, German and East European Jews]
American Jewry was more deeply divided in 1914 than it was to be in the
coming two generations. Apart from the old division between the
descendants of the Spanish and Portuguese (Sephardic) Jews and their
German Jewish (Ashkenazic) brethren, there now existed the deep
cleavage between German Jewry - from the (p. 3)
middle and upper class, liberal, speedily adapting itself to the
American way of life - and the masses of East European Jews who had
been arriving in the New World since 1882. The latter were largely
proletarian or lower middle class, and their spiritual outlook tended
to be either Jewish Orthodox or, at the other extreme, socialist and
antireligious. There was very little in common between those different
kinds of Jews, except for the uncertain and ill-defined feeling that
their common origin and cultural background should mean more to them
than it actually did.
[German Jewish leadership in the
"USA"]
The German Jewish leadership of American Jewry was a highly
sophisticated, intellectual group of men and women. The social elite at
the top was made up of bankers, merchants, judges, lawyers, and
doctors; they were well-bred, well-read, patrons of the arts and of
sports, supporters and furtherers of a well-ordered democracy. Their
philanthropy was sincere and well-meant. Most of them - there were some
notable exceptions - kept some of the religious observances of their
ancestors, or rather those of them that had not been discarded by the
Jewish Reform movement. However, it appeared that their religion meant
less and less to them as time went on.
[German Jews in "USA" help
European Jews with funds for assimilation]
In a sense their social obligation to their brethren (whom they
awkwardly called "coreligionists", to emphasize the fact that there was
really nothing in common between them except religion, or vestiges of
it) was a kind of inherited trait. It had been transmitted to them from
the customs and usages of their ancestors in the ghettos of Germany [in
14th to 18th century],
where, a scant three generations before Morgenthau sent off his
telegram to Schiff, life had produced the same kind of Jew as Eastern
Europe did. In their efforts to "assimilate", that is, to become
citizens of the world in which they lived, they often rationalized
their aid to Jews as part of their concern for humanity as a whole. The
common past put a moral obligation on them to help those Jews in
backward Europe to reach the happy stage of equality - and therefore
prosperity - that they themselves had attained. That, it was hoped,
would be the end of the Jewish problem for Europe's Jews; it would also
be the end of their own (p.4)
problem qua Jews, and it would no longer bother them. But in the
meantime the obligation existed, and it had to be met honestly and
openly.
[German Jews in "USA" supporting
more general human projects than the Jews in Europe]
The concern of German Jews in America for humanity in general and for
Jews in particular was no pretense; on the contrary, their whole
liberal background and education had developed in them a strong feeling
of responsibility toward the poor and the underprivileged. Often the
proportion of their money spent for general nonsectarian philanthropy
exceeded the amounts reserved for their "coreligionists"; but even this
was part of their strong, typically Jewish sense of a social and moral
imperative, which appears to have set them apart as a group from other
rich men in America. Their emphasis on nonsectarianism made their
Jewishness stand out. Not that they hid it; they were aware of it, and
most of them saw it distinctly as a matter of honor not to run away
from it.
[Leader Louis Marshall until 1929
- AJC is splitted into fractions: Zionists and anti-Zionists]
The American Jewish Committee [AJC] was
the
organized expression of the German Jewish aristocracy of spirit,
culture, and money. Its head was the undisputed leader of American
Jewry until his death in 1929, Louis Marshall - lawyer, statesman, and
thinker. The AJC that he led was by no means homogeneous in its
political outlook.
Apart from differences emanating from the American
political scene, there were also divisions into Zionists and
anti-Zionists. Judges Louis D. Brandeis and Julian W. Mack were to
become the mainstays of American Zionism during the war. Others,
especially Julius Rosenwald, the head of Sears Roebuck [a chain of
stores for housewares], followed German
Jewish liberal tradition in seeing Judaism as a religious creed only,
and rejecting all the implications of Jewish national identity. The
majority of AJC tended to follow Marshall in his support of building up
Palestine, whose great spiritual importance in Jewish history they
admitted - as
a place of
refuge, not necessarily
the
place of refuge, for those Jews who wanted or were forced to go there.
[Before 1914: AJC-leaders hope
that nationalism will disappear with liberalism]
At the same time, they did everything they could to help Jews become
nationals and equals in the countries of their residence, so that they
would not have to look for places of refuge (p.5)
at all. Sooner or later, it was hoped, the dangerous notion of
nationalism would disappear altogether.
[Supplement: Herzl nationalism and
the Arabs
The Jewish leaders have no idea of the Arab existence, and up to then
the Arabs had no weapons and racist Herzl says in his book "The Jewish
State" of 1896 they could be driven away
like the natives in the "USA", and perhaps there is gold to be
exploited like in South Africa. But since 1915 the Arabs get weapons by
World War I. and this is never considered by Jewish Zionist policy. So,
the "Zionist movement" is a pure racist and capitalist movement].
[1914-1918: First World War lets
come up new nationalism - 10 of 15 mio. Jews affected by war]
These beliefs were held very sincerely, and yet this was the time - the
summer of 1914 - when the whole structure of nineteenth-century
liberalism collapsed. The collapse was accompanied by a disaster that
struck the Jewish people in the eastern and southeastern parts of
Europe and the Middle East. Three empires and a kingdom - Russia,
Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Romania [England?] - were involved in a
deadly
conflict, and out of the more than fifteen million Jews of the world,
ten million lived in these countries.
[1914-1918: Jewish refugees in
Eastern Europe between the fronts]
Within a very short time there were five hundred thousand Jewish
refugees in the Russian interior, driven there by the czarist armies.
Four hundred thousand more fled before the advancing Russians into the
interior of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Then German armies overran
large areas of formerly Russian Poland. Some eight hundred townships
and villages where Jews lived were hit and severely damaged, and about
eighty thousand Jewish houses were destroyed.
(End note 2: Bernstein: History of American Jewish Relief, p.161)
Yet, significantly, the action of American Jewry was triggered by the
alarming news that reached the U.S. regarding the fate of the
eighty-five thousand Jews of Palestine.
[4 October 1914: Orthodox Jews
found the Central
Committee to help suffering Jews]
The first to act were the Orthodox Jews of overwhelmingly East European
origin. On October 4, 1914, they founded the Central Committee for the
Relief of Jews Suffering through the War. The main officers of the
committee were Leon Kamaiky, Harry Fischel, Harry Lucas, and Morris
Engelman. But Orthodox Jewry could hardly carry the burden by itself.
[25 October 1914: American
Jewish Committee (AJC) founds
the American Jewish Relief Committee (AJRC)]
The leadership of the American Jewish Committee therefore convened a
meeting of forty organizations which took place in New York on October
25, 1914. There a committee of five was elected: Oscar S. Straus, Louis
D. Brandeis, Julian W. Mack, Harry Fischel (of the Central Committee),
and Meyer London (of the socialists). This committee in turn asked one
hundred prominent Jews from all walks of life to select officers for a
new committee: the American Jewish Relief Committee (AJRC). Louis
Marshall was chairman, Felix M. Warburg, treasurer, and Cyrus L.
Sulzberger, secretary. (p.6)
[27 November 1914: Body to
distribute the funds:
Foundation of the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)]
Contrary to expectations, however, the Orthodox group decided in the
end not to join AJRC, and so on November 27, 1914, another body was
established to distribute the funds collected separately by the two
committees. At the suggestion of the new committee's comptroller,
Harriet B. Lowenstein, Felix M. Warburg's secretary, it was called the
Joint Distribution Committee.
[August 1915: The socialists found
the People's
Relief Committee - the "Joint" gets common]
In August 1915 the socialists set up a third cooperating body, the
People's Relief Committee, led by Meyer London, Sholem Asch, and
others.
More than half a century later, although the three original
components are long since defunct, the organization's official name
still remains the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; a
tradition had been established and no one would think of changing the
awkward name. "The Joint" had become a household word for many millions
of Jews.
[Demands of the Jewish war victims
1914-1918 - 1.5 mio. $ on steamer "Vulcan" for Palestine - steamer "Des
Moines" for
Palestine]
The demands on the young organization during the war years of 1914-18
were enormous. Local and state committees were organized in the U.S.
and speakers such as Judah L. Magnes, Reform rabbi, pacifist, enfant
terrible, and - later - president of the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, one of the great orators of his time, were sent to raise
funds. By the end of 1915 some $ 1.5 million had been raised. This
money was sent to Palestine aboard the coal steamer U.S.S.
Vulcan in March 1915, along with
nine hundred tons of food and medicines (55 percent of which went to
the starving Jews, the rest being destributed on a nonsectarian basis
under the supervision of the American consul).
After long delays a second mercy ship, the U.S.S.
Des Moines, reached Palestine in
September 1916.
[Help for Austrian Jews in Russia]
The Jewish aid society in Russia, EKOPO, received money from JDC to
look after the refugees from the war areas, especially the ones who
came from enemy (that is, Austrian) territory, who were forbidden by
czarist government to receive help from Russian Jewish institutions.
[Help of the German Jewish aid
society for Jews in German occupied Poland]
As for German-occupied Poland, the German Jewish aid society -
Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden - established a special branch to aid
the stricken Jews in that area. They served as JDC's agents (p.7)
there until America's entry into the war in 1917.
[JDC-inspections to control the
distributions]
JDC also sent Magnes and Dr. Alexander Dushkin to Poland to check
allegations about the unjust distribution of funds (the two
commissioners cleared the Hilfsverein committee). Both the accusation
and the investigating commission were the first in a long line of
similar events during the coming decades.
[President Wilson declares the
Jewish Sufferers Relief Day for 27th January 1916]
In the meantime, at the urging of friends of the Jewish people in the
United States Senate, President Wilson set aside January 27, 1916, as
Jewish Sufferers Relief Day. On that day about $ 1 million was
collected.
[Collection of the JDC 1914-1918:
Over 16.5 mio. $ - fund-raising by Jacob Billikopf]
By the end of 1918 JDC had managed to collect over $ 16.5 million. This
was done by perfecting fund-raising techniques, largely through the
work of Jacob Billikopf, of the Kansas City Federation of Jewish
Charities. The money was very carefully distributed in the areas of
greatest suffering. As the war proceeded, large sums had to be sent to
Austria and, after 1917, to those parts of Romania that could be
reached.
[Money channeling after America's
entry into the war 1917-1918 by neutral Holland - Boris D. Bogen, Max
Senior]
After America's entry into the war the major problem was how to
transfer money to areas under enemy control. From the start JDC
insisted on full legality and cooperation with the State Department.
Every step it took "had been taken only after consultation with and the
approval of officials of the government, especially of the State
Department."
(End note 3: Ibid. [Bernstein: History of American Jewish Relief],
p.178)
With government approval a committee was set up in neutral Holland by
the head of a Dutch bank; JDC sent Boris D. Bogen and Max Senior from
America to represent it on the committee. This group then transferred
the money received from the United States to Dutch diplomatic
representatives in the stricken areas, who distributed it according to
guidelines received from New York via Holland. Close to $ 2 million was
thus channeled into German-occupied territory between the spring of
1917 and March 1918.
[Since 1918: New national states
and new nationalism makes Jews a propaganda victim every time]
Despite all its efforts, especially in Russia, JDC was confronted with
tremendous suffering when the war ended. Probably over a million Jews
in Poland alone were homeless and were, quite literally, starving.
Moreover, the creation of new nation-states - Poland, Lithuania,
Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Yugoslavia, (p.8)
Hungary, and Austria - and the Bolshevik Revolution caused further
dislocation and local wars. The Jewish minorities, not knowing with
whom to side and occupying an unenviable middle-class position in this
postwar struggle of nations and revolutionary masses, became the butt
of every slander and persecution.
[Pogroms in Galicia and Poland -
civil war in Ukraine - epidemics]
Bloody pogroms instigated by Poles occurred in eastern Galicia and
northeastern Poland. Even worse was the situation in the Ukraine, where
Bolsheviks and their anti-Semitic White Russian opponents were
struggling for control. Probably more than two hundred thousand Jews
were killed or died in the 1918-21 epidemics in eastern Poland and the
Ukraine; seventy-five thousand more were wounded.
[1920-21: Polish-Soviet war with
Jewish victims]
Suffering was especially grim during the futile Polish-Soviet war of
1920-21, fought over areas with large Jewish populations.
[1919-1921 Eastern Europe: Jewish
orphans - tuberculosis - abandoned communities - desperate parents
leave their children]
The results were terrible. In Poland the total number of orphans
after the war was estimated at seventy-five thousand. In the Ukraine it
was said to be two hundred thousand. Sixty percent of the surviving
children in Galicia alone suffered from tuberculosis. In the Ukraine
five hundred Jewish communities had been abandoned, and about half a
million Jews were economically ruined. With the suicide rate growing
alarmingly and parents driven to desperation at the sight of starving
children, some children were abandoned on the doorsteps of the
relatively prosperous.
(End note 4: In:
-- Jacob Lestschinsky: Crisis Catastrophe and Survival (London, 1946)
-- Mark Wischnitzer: Die Juden in der Welt (Berlin 1935), p.225)
[The First Holocaust 1914-1921 has
been forgotten after 1945]
The destruction of European Jewry during World War II has obliterated
the memory of that first holocaust of the twentieth century in the wake
of the first world conflict. Yet in pre-Auschwitz terms the experience
was bad enough.
[1915-1921: Help actions by the
JDC - American Relief Administration - Herbert Hoover - Boris D. Bogen]
Humanitarian groups such as JDC tried to respond in a suitable manner.
After some misunderstandings had been cleared up, JDC joined in the
efforts of the $ 100 million effort by the American Relief
Administration (ARA), under Herbert Hoover, set up by Congress to help
the people of Europe. JDC contributed $ 3.3 million, and in return JDC
workers such as Boris D. Bogen were allowed to undertake aid missions
to Jews in Eastern Europe as officials of ARA.
[1915-1921: Actions of the Joint
in Eastern Europe: Kitchens - hospitals - food convoys - offices -
schools]
Financed by a tremendous fund-raising effort that yielded a total (p.9)
of $ 33.4 million for 1919-21, JDC established soup kitchens on a large
scale, reconstructed and reequipped hospitals, established orphanages,
and sent food in convoys of trucks to hundreds of towns and villages in
Poland. It set up a tracing bureau to reunite families scattered by war
and pestilence; it helped reestablish schools and institutions of
higher learning, religious and secular.
[1919: U.S.S. food steamer
"Westwar
Ho" in Poland - food distribution to Jews and Poles]
In 1919 the U.S.S. [steamer]
Westward
Ho arrived in Poland with food; at the insistence of the Poles,
the food was divided and handed out separately to Jewish and Polish
recipients. Much of the money was spent on nonsectarian missions to the
Polish countryside, because JDC was afraid of arousing anti-Semitism if
it supplied only Jews (despite the fact that ARA did a great deal to
save masses of Poles from the aftereffects of the hostilities).
[June 1919: Joint gets recognition
as a social agency in Poland]
In June 1919 the U.S. ambassador in Poland arranged for official Polish
recognition of JDC as a social agency operating in that country.
[End of 1919: Joint nominates Dr.
Julius Goldman for European director - Goldman principles for acting]
After the first two years of what was essentially emergency relief, the
time came to take stock of the situation and decide on future policies.
JDC had nominated Dr. Julius Goldman as its first European director at
the end of 1919. Goldman tried to put some order into the operations
and set down guiding principles for work in the various countries.
[1919-1920: Bogen organizes social
workers in the "USA" for Poland and Russia]
Bogen, responsible for Poland and Russia, asked for and got the New
York office's agreement to recruit social workers in America to help in
Europe.
[1920-1921: Failure of Bogen:
Foundation of local Joint committees in Poland not possible -
collection of 20,000 $ in Poland]
In February 1920 Bogen arrived in Poland with 126 members of the first
JDC Overseas Unit. Bogen also tried to bridge the deep ideological
differences within East European Jewry and demanded that local
committees be set up, from which he hoped a central committee for
social work in Poland would ultimately emerge. This, unfortunately, did
not happen, though in January 1921, when the Relief Conference for
Congress Poland (the central part of that country) met in Warsaw, Bogen
seemed well on the way to success.
Local fund raising was also
initiated in the spring of 1920; although financially insignificant
(about $ 20,000 was raised in Poland in 1920), this was valuable in
buttressing the morale of the population and preventing them from
becoming the demoralized recipients of doles.
[Since 1920: New Jewish relief
groups]
Due largely to (p.10)
Bogen's efforts, some local groups began to assume responsibility for
palliative aid at the end of 1920.
[1920: Joint installs money
transfer service under Isidore Hershfield - 5,250,000 $ to Polish Jews
in 1920]
Another vital service performed by JDC in Eastern Europe, especially in
Poland, was the institution of a bureau for private remittances under
Isidore Hershfield (who was succeeded by Samuel Golter). American
relatives of Polish Jews could now transfer small sums of money to them
and be reasonably sure that it would reach the desired destination. In
addition to the considerable financial aid thus extended to Polish
Jewry - $ 5,250,000 during the first eight months of 1920,
(End note 5: In:
-- Bernstein: The
History of American Jewish Relief, p.257
-- articles from Zosa Szajkowski with the problems of JDC remittances;
In: American Jewish Historical Quarterly 17, nos. 1-3)
which was much more than the money spent on JDC's behalf in Poland -
the effect on the morale of Polish Jews was tremendous.
[Work of Joint for orphans -
orphan organization CENTOS in 1923 - medical organization TOZ in 1921]
Special efforts were devoted to child and orphan care, the settlement
of the refugee question, and the development of medical facilities. In
1923 JDC founded an orphan care group called CENTOS (Federation of
Associations for the Care of Orphans in Poland), which later developed
into a general child care society.
TOZ,
(Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludnosci Zydowskiej (Society for
Safeguarding the Health of Jewish Population)
the medical society, had been founded in 1921.
Both these organizations tended to become less and less dependent on
direct JDC aid, though they never became completely self-supporting.
[1921-1922: Joint can install
homes and local societies for Jews]
During 1921 and 1922 JCD also managed to liquidate most of its work for
the hundreds of thousands of refugees, arranging for the reception in
temporary or permanent homes and helping establish local societies to
deal with the problem.
[Since summer 1920: Cultural work
supported by the Joint under Cyrus Adler]
In the cultural field, the JDC Cultural Committee in New York, under
the chairmanship of Cyrus Adler, recommended in the summer of 1920 that
schools in Eastern Europe be supported by allocating one-third of the
monies raised by the Central Committee and the People's Relief
Committee in their separate efforts.
[Cultural support: Split between
anti-Zionist Yiddishist schools and Zionist schools]
However, this arrangement was likely to give rise to a great deal of
resentment, because the American Jewish socialists tended to support
the secular, anti-Zionist Yiddishist schools, whereas the Orthodox
(p.11)
of course, supported their own school system in Poland. This would have
discriminated against the Hebrew and Zionist schools (the Tarbuth
schools) which were then growing in strength and importance. Since AJRC
was practically defunct by that time, JDC itself took over the
responsibility of paying a suitable proportion of the monies to support
schools and institutions that the Orthodox and the socialists did not
wish to subsidize.
[1921: JDC help carloads in Poland
and in Polish Ukraine - Ukrainians murder Cantor and Friedlander on 5th
July 1920]
The end of the Russo-Polish war of 1920-21 also marked the last stages
of emergency relief by JDC. Two Americans then in Poland, Dr. Charles
D. Spivak and Elkan C. Voorsanger, supervised the dispatch of carloads
of supplies to the stricken areas. JDC representatives on mercy
missions also ventured into Polish-occupied areas in the Ukraine. On
one such journey two JDC workers, Bernard Cantor and Prof. Israel
Friedlander, were murdered by Ukrainians on July 5, 1920.
[Since 1919?: Creation of a JDC
European Executive branch under Dr. Goldman]
The approaching end of the period of emergency relief was marked by
disagreements on the future organizational setup of JDC in Europe. Dr.
Goldman, the European director, wanted to create an overall European
Executive which would supervise JDC committees in the various
countries. Bogen, on the other hand, preferred centralized control from
New York and the administration of JDC funds by American country
directors. In the end Goldman's concept was accepted and became the
standard practice in the period between the wars.
It was only later, after 1945, that nominating American country
directors was adopted again, though without abolishing the European
Executive, a basic JDC organizational tool that exists to this day.
[JDC European directors 1919-1938:
Goldman - Becker - Rosenberg - Kahn]
Julius Goldman resigned at the end of 1920 and was succeeded by James
A. Becker. Becker in turn was followed in 1921 by James N. Rosenberg,
who served for one year. In 1924 Dr. Bernhard Kahn took over the post
of JDC European director, which he was to hold for 14 years.
[End of October 1920: Decision for
an
end of emergency relief by Goldman proposal - and protest in Poland]
Before he returned to America, Goldman proposed to JDC in New York that
a decision be made to discontinue emergency relief, which was done on
October 28, 1920, by the JDC Executive Committee. (p.12)
The date for the final liquidation of emergency programs was set for
July 1, 1921. As expected, the decision caused a great uproar. A
conference of representatives of Jewish aid committees meeting in
Warsaw on February 20, 1921, protested the new policy and asked for a
postponement, at least as far as eastern Poland was concerned, of six
months. A decision to close down the JDC remittances department in
Warsaw was also protested.
[1921: Situation of the Jews
in Europe differs from country to country]
The situation in 1921 varied from country to country. There was no
practical possibility of stopping emergency relief in Poland on the
date determined in New York; but the trend was set, and though JDC
never did actually stop emergency relief, its scope was very sharply
reduced as the year drew to an end.
[1919-1921: Situation in Lithuania
with two opposed committees - 35,000 refugees from Poland - Jewish
People's Bank]
Lithuania was a different case altogether; JDC entered there only in
1919, when Sholem Asch, the famed Yiddish writer, went there on its
behalf. He was followed by a committee from the German Hilfsverein,
with whom JDC continued a very close relationship, composed of Dr.
Bernhard Kahn, Dr. Arthur Hantke (a well-known German Zionist leader),
and Dr. Meier Hildesheimer. A Lithuanian Jewish National Council was
opposed there by a left-wing workers' committee. Successive American
representatives tried to settle the local differences and help the
suffering Jewish population, especially the thirty-five thousand
refugees from Poland. Finally, with JDC's help, the Jewish People's
Bank was developed, which in 1921 boasted of 77 branches that granted
loans at low rates of interest.
[Since February 1920: JDC action
in Latvia for Jews fled to the country side]
In Latvia, JDC operations started even later, in February 1920, when
the first possibilities of transferring money there became known. JDC
sent emergency relief to stricken Latvian Jews, many of whom had left
the cities and had gone to the country because of lack of food.
[Henry G. Alsberg in the Prague
committee]
In Latvia and Czechoslovakia a resident JDC representative, Henry G.
Alsberg, was for a time in practical control of the Prague committee
(Hilfskomité) of wealthy Jews.
[1920: Slovakia and Subcarpathian
Jews get independent from the Prague committee]
Under a new director, Slovakia and Subcarpathian Russia (in Czech
initials, (p.13)
PKR), the easternmost, poorest, Ruthenian-speaking
section of the country, were made independent of the Prague committee
in 1920. This was quite logical, because the Jews of Bohemia and
Moravia, the western sections of Czechoslovakia, recovered very quickly
and soon needed no more help.
[1919: JDC action for 120,000
Jewish refugees in Vienna: 1 mio. $ - Viennese social aid committee]
In Austria the main problem was the close to 120,000 Jewish refugees
crowded into Vienna at the close of the war. JDC sent Meyer Gillis and
Max Pine to the starving city at the end of 1918. Before JDC help
became effective, however, many of the refugees trekked home to Poland
on their own initiative. The old Viennese social aid committee, the
Israelitische Allianz zu Wien, did whatever it could to help those that
remained. JDC sent close to $ 1 million to Vienna in 1919, to subsidize
soup kitchens and provide medical and child care.
[Hungary 1919-1921: Action by ARA
- Jewish Kun government - reactionary government - anti-Semitic laws -
deportation of Polish Jews - JDC stops actions in 1921]
In Hungary the situation was still different. There, ARA's [American
Relief Administration] effective
program for providing a minimum of aid was very cautiously supplemented
by JDC funds for specific Jewish aims. A Hungarian Jewish committee,
set up - as in other countries - with the full blessing of JDC, slowly
took over specific Jewish tasks.
The problem in Hungary was largely
political. After the failure of the short-lived Communist regime under
Béla Kun, a Jew, the White Hungarian government took a definitely
anti-Semitic line, though in fact the Jews had perhaps suffered more
than anyone else under Kun's government. The new reactionary regime
deported 22 trainloads of Polish Jewish refugees back to Poland. In
1920 Hungary was the first postwar European government to institute a
numerus clausus law, permitting only a low percentage of Jewish
students to register at the universities. JDC, at any rate, ceased its
operations there in 1921.
[Romania 1919-1921: Chaos in new
Romanian territories Bessarabia, Bucovina and Transylvania - JDC action
by Hettie Goldman]
The situation of the Jews in Romania in the postwar period was even
more complicated. While Jews had suffered relatively little in Old
Romania (Walachia and Moldavia), complete chaos reigned in Bessarabia,
Bucovina, and Transylvania, all of them provinces annexed by Romania
from her Russian, Austrian, and Hungarian neighbors. Pioneer work was
done there for JDC by Hettie Goldman (p.14)
and James A. Becker in 1919-20. The main results were setting up of
provincial central committees in Bessarabia, Bucovina, and Transylvania
and the provision of emergency relief.
[Romania: Joint help actions under
Alexander A. Landesco - Joint help actions under Noel Aronovici for 15,000 Ukrainian Jewish refugees]
After Becker, Alexander A. Landesco, himself a Romanian-born American
Jew, was instrumental in establishing loan
kassas - small cooperative banks
lending money at very low rates of interest. Fifteen thousand refugees
from Ukrainian pogroms also had to be supported, and this problem was
dealt with by a local social worker, Noel Aronovici, who entered JDC
service and was to become one of the central figures of JDC work in the
whole interwar period.
In February 1921 Landesco left Romania, having provided for the
cessation of relief.
[1921: Jews expelled from Dniester
river to Old Romania by Romanian army - new Joint help actions]
Yet soon after his departure JDC had to intervene again when forty
thousand Bessarabian Jews living within seven miles of the Russian
border on the Dniester River were brutally expelled into Old Romania by
government troops. In Transylvania the reduction in relief aid by JDC
was made possible only through an increase in the remittances sent
there by relatives in the U.S.
[1914-1918: JDC action in Turkey
via the embassy of Holland - Aaron Teitelbaum since 1918]
As we have seen, JDC was founded in response to a cry for help
emanating from the Middle East. During the war Turkish Jewry received
help via the Dutch Embassy at Istanbul, and after the war Aaron
Teitelbaum of JDC supervised the administration of relief there
[Greece 1917: Fire in Salonika -
help by the Joint]
and in Salonika, Greece, where an ancient Jewish community had been
hard hit by a devastating fire in 1917.
[Palestine 1914-1918: 1.5 mio. $
transferred for uprooted Jews by Turkish rulers]
In Palestine a committee under Eliezer Hoofien, a Dutch Zionist who
later was to be the head of Palestine Jewry's foremost banking
institution, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, distributed funds under the
auspices of the sympathetic Spanish consul, Señor Ballabar. During the
war over $ 1.5 million was transferred by JDC, to deal with the
problems of a community physically uprooted and evicted from their
homes by the Turkish rulers. After the conquest of the country by the
British, JDC asked David de Sola Pool, a member of the Zionist
Commission then visiting Palestine, to act as its representative.
Orphan committees, aid to a Zionist medical unit, support for the
religious groups and their institutions, loan banks - all these
swallowed (p.16)
very large funds: over $ 3.2 million for the period 1918-21.
[Siberia 1919-20: Joint actions
for Jewish prisoners of war under Dr. Frank F. Rosenblatt]
Additional efforts, smaller in scope but no less decisive for those
involved, were made to help tens of thousands of stranded Jewish
prisoners of war in Siberia in 1919-20. Dr. Frank F. Rosenblatt, the
JDC representative, was the moving spirit in setting up a Siberian War
Prisoners' Repatriation Fund, in which a number of organizations,
including the American Red Cross, participated. 700,000 dollars was
spent there by JDC.
[Japan 1919-20: Jews in Yokohama]
Other Jews stranded in Yokohama, of all places, were also helped to
emigrate by a cooperative effort of JDC and the great Jewish emigration
agency, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).
[Jews are helped in Iraq and Iran
- Jews in Abyssinia / Ethiopia]
Others were helped in Iraq and Iran, and a group of scientists working
with the Abyssinian Falashas, who are by some believed to be a lost
Jewish tribe, were supported in their efforts.
[Germany 1919: 60,000 immigrated
East European Jews - 1923: Hyperinflation and Joint help actions
for Jews and for German children]
In Europe, meanwhile, under Becker's directorship relief aid had been
more or less terminated in 1921. The exception to this general rule was
Germany, where 60,000 East European Jews had immigrated, most of them
after the 1918 armistice. Then Germany underwent its catastrophic
economic decline and runaway inflation, in 1922-24, JDC had to come to
German Jewry's help. Its aid was concentrated on child care, and its
contributions went partly to nonsectarian American efforts to aid
German children generally.
[Cooperation Joint - Quaker
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Germany]
In this activity a very close and friendly cooperation developed
between JDC and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) of the
American Quaker community; this friendship between the two aid
organizations was to yield important results during the catastrophes of
the 1930s and the 1940s.
[New European Advisory Committee
under Louis Marshall - inspection in Europe by Felix M. Warburg,
Goldman and Becker - starting of help for self-help actions]
In New York, JDC set up a European Advisory Committee, headed by Louis
Marshall, to cooperate closely with its European director. In its
behalf Felix M. Warburg went to Europe in 1921 to investigate the
situation. His report, together with the views submitted by Goldman and
Becker, finally moved JDC to embark on a new policy in Europe: an
attempt to help European Jewish communities to help themselves by
supporting what was termed "reconstruction" activities. This was to be
achieved by establishing (p.16)
each central committee in Europe on a secure, self-supporting basis.
Where there were no central committees, functional organizations
dealing with different aspects of social work would have to be made
independent. This would finally allow JDC to withdraw and terminate its
activities.
On June 17, 1921, Herbert H. Lehman, chairman of the new Economic
Reconstruction Committee, outlined these proposals to the JDC Executive
Committee.
[Joint: Sub-committees]
Parallel to Lehman's committee were other special committees, set up to
deal with refugee problems (under David M. Bressler), orphans (under
Solomon Lowenstein), and medical care (under Bernard Flexner); these
now joined the older Cultural Committee under Cyrus Adler and thus a
new organizational structure of JDC emerged, actually designed to lead
it to the desired dissolution as speedily as possible. Budgets were
itemized according to the different functions, and discretionary funds
for the European director were cut to a minimum. A proper accounting
system was supervised by the accounting firm of Loeb and Troper.
[Joint: Authority of the laymen -
policy determination by others]
What was significant in this whole structure, beyond the practical
technical points, was the complete and unquestioned authority of the
laymen who provided the funds or directed their collection from others.
Marshall, Warburg, Lehman, Lowenstein, Bressler, Flexner, Adler - these
men determined what should be done. The professionals like Bogen or
Senior, Dr. Rosen in Russia (of whom we shall speak later), and even
Jacob Billikopf in America were important; they were treated in a
gentlemanly way and listened to carefully and sympathetically, but in
the end they were not the ones who determined policy.
[Poland 1921-24: Joint sends over
20 mio. $]
In 1921-24, JDC collected over $ 20 million, hoping thereby to help
Europe's Jews in a "once and for all" effort.
[Poland 1924-1925: Recession,
harvest failures and anti-Jewish government measures - starving Jews]
But when Warburg went on another investigating trip in 1925, he found
that JDC just could not abdicate its responsibility, at least not yet.
An economic recession in Poland had caused the government there to
founder in a series of contradictory economic policies, some of which
were expressly directed against the Jews. A series of crop failures in
Bessarabia and Bucovina did not improve the situation. (p.17)
In the winter of 1925/6, 83 percent of the Jewish laborers in Warsaw
were unemployed.
(End Note 6: Handlin: A Continuing Task (New York, 1964), p.52)
[Jews of Europa 1926-28: JDC
actions of 12.5 mio. $]
Warburg, returning from his investigation, suggested the creation of an
"overseas chest". JDC and the Zionists cooperated in this venture at
first (1925), but then the different aims of the two groups reasserted
themselves. Faced with a Jewish American community that was becoming
increasingly indifferent to disaster appeals, JDC nevertheless raised
some $ 12.5 million in 1926-28 to continue its work in Europe.
[1929: JDC cannot be dissolved]
At the end of the first decade after the war, 15 years after its
founding, JDC was still alive, though very reluctantly. It had always
seen itself as a purely temporary organization to help the
"coreligionists" in foreign parts get back on their feet economically.
American Jews had to help the Jews abroad, certainly, but the proper
place for philanthropy and social work was in the United States.
Somewhat to its surprise, in 1929 JDC found itself in a world that had
turned it into a permanent institution. (p.18)
