1914
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<p>With the onset of World War I, some 60,000 Jews in Ottoman-ruled Palestine were near starvation, cut off from traditional sources of support in the European Jewish community. Henry Morgenthau Sr., U.S. Ambassador to Turkey, cabled prominent American Jewish leader Jacob Schiff in New York, appealing for $50,000 (equal to $1 million today) in aid to be dispatched immediately. American Jewish donors promptly wired the sum, and JDC was born.</p>
JDC founded to assist Jews in need
<p><b>Photograph: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Underwood and Underwood</span></p>
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Meeting, Joint Distribution Committee (representing the American Jewish Relief Committee, the Central Relief Committee and the People’s Relief Committee), Felix M. Warburg’s office. New York, NY, 1918.</span></p>
1924
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<p>Agro-Joint (the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation) trained and resettled some 70,000 Jews as farmers in Ukraine and Crimea. Agro-Joint also funded medical care, homes for the aged, orphan care, vocational training, loan funds, workshops, and cooperatives in the cities.</p>
American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation (Agro-Joint) formed in Soviet Union
<p><b>Photo Caption:</b>Trained in farming techniques like wheat threshing, men and women alike became capable farmers. Crimea, c. 1930.</p>
1933
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<p>Between 1933 and 1942, JDC allocations to Germany totaled over $4.5 million, funding medical and child care, welfare activities, vocational and agricultural training, and free loan cooperatives for German Jews. We also helped tens of thousands to emigrate.</p>
Hitler came to power, and JDC worked to help German Jews
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">German Jewish refugees departing from Bremerhaven, Germany 1938. From 1933 to 1939, some 110,000 emigrants from Germany received assistance from JDC-supported organizations.</span></p>
1938
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<p>In Cuba, we supported European Jewish refugees in partnership with the Quaker American Friends Service Committee. By 1940, we are helping Jewish refugees in 40+ countries.</p>
Provided aid to refugees worldwide
<p><b>Photo Caption:</b> <span style="font-weight: 400;">Children and caretakers watch the sports game at the Children’s Summer Project, funded by the David M. Bressler Memorial Fund. Havana, Cuba, 1943.</span></p>
1945
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<p>At the end of World War II, Allied forces set up displaced persons (DP) camps to house hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the war. JDC partnered with other relief organizations to provide food, clothing, job training, education, religious materials, legal representation, and emigration assistance. By 1947, an estimated 250,000 Jewish refugees passed through DP camps, and received help from JDC.</p>
Mobilized comprehensive services to refugees in DP camps in Germany and Austria
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Women and children inside the kitchen area of the JDC operated Chiari camp. Milan, Italy, c. 1948.</span></p>
1949
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<p>With the new Jewish state under tremendous pressure to absorb Holocaust survivors, immigrants with disabilities, and the elderly and chronically ill, we partnered with the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Government of Israel to create Malben, a new national framework for providing care.</p>
Established the new State of Israel’s social safety net
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Young Jewish refugees disembarking from the SS Mataroa with a flag of the Star of David in their hands. Haifa, c. 1945.</span></p>
1951
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<p>JDC assistance to 90,000 Jewish children throughout the Muslim world included: our partnership with OSE, a French Jewish humanitarian organization, in supporting clinics and medical installations to combat tuberculosis, trachoma, and tinea; our establishment of milk depots; and our support of summer camps and educational programs.</p>
Provided comprehensive relief to Jewish children in Muslim countries
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">The doctor, public health nurses and nurses aides responsible for the JDC mass treatment program against trachoma. Casablanca, Morocco, c. 1950s.</span></p>
1962
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<p>When Algeria became independent, nearly its entire Jewish community sought refuge in France, fleeing harassment. We helped them evacuate and supported the French Jewish community’s massive expansion of services to absorb the newcomers, as well as successive waves of North African émigrés.</p>
Offered assistance to Algerian Jewish immigrants to France
<p><b>Photo Caption:</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Summer camp for Jewish children. Algeria, 1960s.</span></p>
1964
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<p>We began to work in the Jewish communities of India, focusing on Jewish poverty and education. This work continues today. </p>
JDC entered India
<p><b>Photograph: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Jean Mohr, Geneva</span></p>
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Students at a JDC-subsidized ORT school. Mumbai, India, 1965. </span></p>
1969
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<p>JDC and the Israeli government partnered to launch ESHEL, the Association for the Planning and Development of Services for the Aged, which models projects and assists communities in organizing and financing their own programs for aging populations.</p>
Founded organization in partnership with Israeli government to plan services for aged
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Exercise class for the residents of the </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">ESHEL</span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Home for the Aged. Afula, Israel, 1980.</span></p>
1979
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<p>This year saw a zenith in Soviet Jewish emigration from Russia, with 51,663 refugees applying to emigrate. Since Soviet Jews could not initiate immigration applications from within the FSU, they traveled to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) processing centers in Vienna and Rome and waited while their applications were processed. For more than two decades, beginning in the 1970s, JDC provided care and maintenance, basic and emergency medical services, financial support, social services, educational, cultural, and religious programs, and housing assistance.</p>
Assisted record numbers of Soviet Jewish transmigrants
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Newly arrived Soviet Jewish transmigrants depart the Rome airport for the United States. Rome, Italy, c. 1979.</span></p>
1983
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<p>We provided famine relief and set up non-sectarian medical and agricultural recovery projects in Ethiopia’s Gondar Province. We also improved electrification and promote well drilling for a clean water supply.</p>
Provided humanitarian aid in Ethiopia
<p><b>Photograph:</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Peggy Myers</span></p>
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Using the new well that was dug for clean water. Teda, Ethiopia, 1988.</span></p>
1988
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<p>For the first time since the liquidation of our Agro-Joint project in 1938, JDC returned to the Soviet Union, revitalizing Jewish communal infrastructures and empowering Soviet Jewry.</p>
JDC is invited back to Soviet Union
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">The first public concert of Jewish music in decades, organized by JDC. From Left to Right, Cantor Yosef Malovany, Ralph Goldman, Conductor Konstantin Krimetic. Moscow, Russia, May 1989.</span></p>
1990
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<p>Camp Szarvas still serves some 1,600 Jewish campers from more than 25 countries each summer, enhancing and nurturing the Jewish identity and education of an entire generation of post-Communist Eastern European youth. JDC’s international community development team also runs year-round training seminars for young Hungarian Jewish leaders.</p>
Partnered with Ronald S. Lauder Foundation to found International Summer Camp in Hungary
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">A special camp session held at Szarvas for youth from flood ravaged areas of Poland. Szarvas, Hungary, 1997.</span></p>
1992
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<p>With the assistance of local Jewish leaders, we organized a series of 11 convoys, evacuating Muslims, Christians, and Jews out of war-torn Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.</p>
Coordinated rescue operation in Sarajevo
<p><b>Photograph: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Edward Serotta</span></p>
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">A young boy leaves home on a bus, part of a JDC rescue convoy from Sarajevo. Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1994.</span></p>
2001
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<p>JDC assisted the Argentine Jewish community, in partnership with local organizations, through job training, cash relief, school lunches, scholarships, and baby care. At their height, JDC’s relief efforts assisted about 36,000 people.</p>
Developed emergency relief program for Jews affected by the financial crisis in Argentina
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">An elderly client in Buenos Aires receives lifesaving emergency relief during Argentina’s economic crisis.</span></p>
2004
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<p>In response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, JDC raised over $19 million for tsunami relief. Through partnerships with local and international NGOs, JDC implemented emergency relief and longer-term rehabilitation projects in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Since then, JDC has led the Jewish response to major disasters in Haiti (2010), Japan (2011), the Philippines (2013), Nepal (2015), the Bahamas (2019), and more.</p>
Coordinated relief and development response to South Asian tsunami
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">School children in Sri Lanka stand in front of a JDC banner following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.</span></p>
2013
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<p>Following Typhoon Haiyan, the catastrophic storm that claimed over 6,000 lives in the Philippines, JDC worked with its partners to rebuild classrooms and schools, restore local fishing businesses, offer medical and psychological help, and facilitate disaster preparedness. </p>
Promoted disaster preparedness and resilience in the Philippines
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">A JDC worker gives medical assistance to a victim of Typhoon Haiyan, a natural disaster that devastated the Philippines in 2013.</span></p>
2014
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<p>When violence broke out in Eastern Ukraine, JDC continued to support vulnerable elderly Jews and poor families living in the conflict zone, as well as helping to resettle internally displaced people in Ukrainian cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. JDC continues to support Jews who remain in places like Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea.</p>
Assisted Jews impacted by the conflict in Eastern Ukraine
<p><b>Photograph: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Amnon Gutman</span></p>
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">A woman receives assistance from a JDC volunteer after being displaced from her home in eastern Ukraine.</span></p>
2020-Beyond
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<p>In 70 countries and across 17 time zones — JDC’s work has not skipped a beat, addressing emerging needs and helping communities adjust to this new reality. We’re safely delivering care to the most vulnerable in the former Soviet Union and beyond, helping at-risk populations in Israel, innovative and sustaining Jewish community life, and providing humanitarian aid in the developing world.</p>
Mobilized global response to the COVID-19 pandemic
<p><b>Photograph: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Tamir Elterman</span></p>
<p><b>Photo Caption: </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">JDC workers assemble mobile ventilators in a factory in Israel, to be shipped to India during its COVID-19 surge.</span></p>
