I LIVE. SEND HELP. Part I

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was founded in New York City in 1914 in response to the plight of destitute Jews in Palestine and Eastern Europe whose traditional sources of support were interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. The original appeal was made from one New Yorker to another when Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, wrote to Jewish philanthropist Jacob Schiff in New York about “Jews facing terrible crisis….”

After Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, appealed to Schiff for assistance for the Jews in Palestine, within days Schiff, with the assistance of New Yorkers Felix M. Warburg and Louis Marshall, had raised $50,000 for the cause.

Over the next one hundred years, JDC would become the premier global Jewish humanitarian organization by playing a pivotal role in rescuing and sustaining individuals and entire communities.

This 1929 painting is based on a photograph taken of the Executive Committee in a meeting on July 10, 1918.

Responding to pleas for help from Jews at the outbreak of World War I, the Joint Distribution Committee was formed by Jewish relief groups representing the spectrum of Jews in America-the American Jewish Relief Committee (mostly German Jews), the Central Committee for the Relief of Jews (orthodox), and the People's Relief Committee (labor groups). Contributions to JDC came from American Jews and non-Jews of all backgrounds, from well-established philanthropists to new immigrants.

By 1915, wartime conditions in Europe had made it impossible for American Jews to help loved ones overseas, so JDC opened a Transmission Bureau in New York City with branches across the country. Relatives were able to deposit funds that could be sent directly to family in Europe and Palestine. Before the war’s end, over $600,000 was transferred, typically in small deposits of $5 or $10.

Silberman, of Des Moines, Iowa, inquired about sending a remittance to his brother in Sumy, Ukraine. Albert Lucas was the Secretary of JDC.

Over the course of World War I, JDC raised over $16 million, channeling funds, food, and medicines to Jews in need. Despite the Ottoman Empire’s blockades of Palestine ports during the war, enough aid reached the area to sustain a desperate population. The British capture of Jerusalem in 1917, and all of Palestine the following year, enabled JDC to initiate a broader array of programs and services.

Peace brought new crises throughout Europe and Russia as hundreds of thousands of Jews fell victim to disease, famine, pogroms, displacement, and new hostilities in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s collapse.
As a representative of JDC, Boris Bogen was sent to Poland in 1920 to assess and assist.

By 1940, JDC was helping Jews in more than forty countries and funding chartered ships for immigration to the United States, Palestine, Shanghai, Japan, South America, the Caribbean, Tangier, as well as other destinations across the globe. Before the United States entered the war in December 1941, JDC relief programs helped to sustain over 600,000 Polish Jews.
In the document at left, Rabbi Kalmanowitz thanked JDC for his role in the escape of 300 scholars from the Mirrer Yeshiva in Vilna.

Even after 1941, JDC found ways to funnel aid to desperate Jews behind enemy lines—parachuting supplies into Yugoslavia, getting funds to the Jewish underground, supporting children in hiding in France, and shipping relief packages to concentration camps wherever possible.

This card was issued by the International Committee for the Organization of European Immigrants in China, Shanghai. Claus Hirsch arrived in the United States in 1947 and became a United States citizen in 1953; he currently lives in New York City.

The story continues in our exhibit I Live. Send Help. Part II ...