JDC in the 1920s
Following World War I, JDC expanded its relief efforts in Eastern Europe, including establishing Jewish health and welfare societies in Poland and the Soviet Union and funding public health programs in Lithuania and Romania. In Palestine, JDC began to extend subsidies to public health organizations and promoted economic and agricultural development.
In Depth
Post-World War I: Relief and Reconstruction
Torah scrolls in Demiev Synagogue in Kiev, Soviet Ukraine, vandalized during one of the many pogroms that brought death and destruction to the city’s Jews
Two Jewish orphans, newly arrived in Jaffa, Palestine, on the first boat of refugees from Russia
Waiting for aid in front of the relief office in Jerusalem
A blind student examining a relief map in a class at the Jewish Blind Institute (Beit Chinuch Ivrim) in Jerusalem, a home, school, and workshop for the blind supported by JDC
Waiting for the opening of JDC’s soup kitchen in Aleksandrovsk (Zaporizhzhya), Soviet Ukraine
JDC’s first medical unit upon arrival in Paris, with instructions to care for the sick and the disabled, especially children, and the set up a comprehensive medico-sanitary program in Poland
Distribution of relief supplies to the needy in JDC warehouse in Kremenchug, Soviet Ukraine
Jewish children waiting for examinations at the JDC-supported clinic in Kremenchug, Soviet Ukraine
Villagers completing repairs on the bathhouse in Labun’, Ukraine, with funding from JDC
Hebrew school in Debica (Dembitsa), Poland, supported by the Committee for the Relief of Polish Jews
Children at a summer colony in Wlodzimierz Wolynski, Poland
Orthodox youths in a weavers’ workshop attached to their yeshiva in Sighet, Romania
Settlers from a colony in the Krivoi Rog District, Ukraine
Working the village fields in Palestine
Early residents of the old age home in Nikolaev, Ukraine, maintained by the local aid society with JDC assistance
Meeting of the Association of Jewish Credit Cooperatives in Riga, Latvia
Beyond Relief: JDC in Interwar Ukraine and Crimea
By 1920, war, revolution, and famine had left the newly emerged Soviet Union in chaos. JDC brought aid to impoverished Jews in the region, especially desperate after years of bloody pogroms and ongoing exclusion from any government services.