Barefoot children outside a public soup kitchen

A group of poor Jewish children, barefoot and holding their pots, waits to receive food at a soup kitchen in Rowne, Poland (currently Rivne, Ukraine). Even after the destruction and dislocation of World War I came to an end, the situation for Jews in Eastern Europe remained bleak. Civil war in Russia and the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920 caused further hardship; for Jews, there was additional danger from numerous pogroms. Famine and disease were widespread and the economy lay in ruins. Children were especially vulnerable, with several hundred thousand orphaned. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (“the Joint”), a humanitarian relief organization, leveraged its resources, working with local and regional groups to help provide food, clothing, medical care, and education to the needy. On the first medical team of JDC representatives was Dr. Max Colton, the physician, who took this photograph to document the work of the medical unit and the communities where it worked. The Joint was founded by American Jews to help destitute Jews in Europe and Palestine impacted by World War I.