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OuR PARTNERS
AT WORK IN GREECE
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)
Now in its second century of service, JDC
is the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian assistance organization. Founded in 1914, JDC today works on behalf of North America’s Jewish communities and others in Israel and more than 70 countries across the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America to alleviate hunger and hardship, rescue Jews in danger, and create lasting connections to Jewish life.
JDC builds Israel’s human capital by empowering its most vulnerable citizens, giving youth at risk, the chronically unemployed, people with disabilities, and new immigrants the tools they need to participate fully in the country’s future.
And JDC is the global Jewish address for disaster relief and international development assistance.
Continuing its legacy of tested in-the-field expertise, today JDC is improving millions of lives around the globe. Wherever in the world Jews are in need, JDC is there.
JDC’s Work in Greece
JDC’s partnership with the Greek Jewish community dates back to 1915, when financial aid was sent to the Chief Rabbi in Thessaloniki. JDC helped the community there rebuild the Jewish Quarter following
a major fire in 1917; provided equipment for vocational classes in the Jewish schools in the 1920s; established a revolving small loan fund for community members in the 1930s that operated until the outbreak of World
War II; and worked with the Jewish Refugee Committee in Athens to aid Jews fleeing the Nazi advance across Europe.
Eighty-five percent of Greek Jewry perished in the Holocaust. Entire communities vanished as their members were deported by the Nazis to various concentration camps. Returning to a country devastated by Nazi occupation and warfare, with inflation leading to instability and starvation looming for many, by the fall of 1945 JDC was helping to shelter and sustain some 5,700 Greek Jews—more than half of the country’s surviving Jewish population.
JDC established new loan funds that aided some 4,000 Jews; it maintained three hachsharot (training camps) and furnished other support for would-be emigrants to pre- state Israel; and it operated critical medical, childcare, and vocational training programs. It helped the Athens community support its synagogues, and purchased the land for and helped build the city’s Jewish day school, whose pupils were transported each day in JDC buses and benefited from JDC food supplies.
Well into the 1950s, JDC continued to maintain a limited but essential presence in Greece, helping with welfare activities, vocational training, and medical aid until a resurgent community could once again become self- sustaining. In the mid-1960s, JDC began to partner with local institutions to help cultivate future community leaders and ensure a viable Jewish future in Greece.
In the wake of the country’s financial crisis, JDC is working closely with the Greek Jewish community, which has shown strong resilience in battling current economic realities. The
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