Ha'aretz - 11.11.2004

Ha'aretz

Joint Distribution Committee celebrates 90th anniversary with exhibit in Moscow

MOSCOW - (AP) The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is marking its 90th anniversary with a photo exhibit documenting its work in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

The committee was founded in 1914 to help the Jews of Russia, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia survive the First World War. 

It collected funds in the United States to aid orphanages, hospitals, agricultural collectives and other institutions run by Jewish communities.

The exhibit, at Moscow's House of Photography, includes photos of JDC officials and the people they helped: children orphaned during the pogroms that raged before, during and after the war, emaciated victims of the famine that swept through parts of the region in the 1920s, and impoverished families trying to scrape by after having their possessions confiscated by the Soviet government.

Many of the older photos in the exhibit, portraying bearded Jews in traditional garb, reflect a world destroyed by the Nazis and the militantly atheist Soviet government - which accused the JDC of "Zionist espionage" and forbade it to operate on Soviet territory from the 1930s until 1989. During that period, it sent anonymous aid packages to needy Jews through intermediary organizations.

Today, the JDC feeds about 100,000 elderly people in Russia and 240,000 in the former Soviet Union, JDC President Eugene Ribicoff said. 

The organization has established 180 community centers and about an equal number of libraries, providing opportunities for Jews to connect with one another.

"We try to reach people wherever they are," Ribicoff said.