Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz to Joseph Hyman, JDC Executive Director

Rabbi Kalmanowitz, President of the Mirer Yeshiva, which originated in Mir, Poland, penned this letter thanking Joseph C. Hyman, Executive Director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), for his role in the escape of 300 scholars from the Mirrer Yeshiva in Vilna. During 1940-41, thousands of Polish Jewish refugees in Lithuania, among them the rabbis and student bodies of entire yeshivas, fled eastward across Siberia to Japan. After Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, JDC assisted the refugees to move from Kobe, Japan to other temporary or permanent haven such as Shanghai. JDC subsidized their travel expenses