A Complicated Partnership: American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Programs in the USSR, 1942-1948

During the Second World War, JDC participated in complex negotiations with Soviet authorities in an attempt to aid Jews in the USSR.

In February 1942, JDC chairman Paul Baerwald approached Soviet ambassador Maksim Litvinov for permission to send a JDC representative to the Soviet Union. That request was denied, but Litvinov did agree to allow JDC to send aid to Polish Jews who had fled to the USSR and were now stranded in Soviet Central Asia. During 1942-1948, 10,000 such packages were shipped from Teheran each month to the Soviet Union.

In September 1943, the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC), Solomon Mikhoels and Itzik Feffer, met with JDC`s leadership in New York to discuss JDC assistance. Following these negotiations, on October 12, 1943, JDC`s Administrative Committee agreed to establish a non-sectarian aid program in the USSR. But JDC representatives were denied the right to monitor distribution, and only a small portion of the aid reached the suffering Jewish population. As a result, some American Jewish activists appealed to JDC to discontinue aid to the USSR.

JDC`s approach to Soviet requests was characterized by flexibility and an understanding of the special circumstances in which a devastated nation lived: in September 1946 JDC initiated medical project that provided four city hospitals with much-needed equipment.

From January-March 1953, JDC was viciously attacked by the Soviet press, with no mention of JDC`s humanitarian aid to the USSR during WWII and the post-war years, amounting to over two million dollars.