In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

>> 93  Jewish American Philanthropy and the Crisis of 1929 The Case of OZE-TOZ and the JDC Rakefet Zalashik It is very hard to convince the people here in Europe that the J.D.C. is at the end of its work; they still believe that by sending appeals and delegations to the States they can go on drawing money from the J.D.C. —Bernard Kahn, head of the JDC’s European office, writing to the home office in New York1 Introduction “It is very beautiful for Lord Rothschild, Sir Samuel Intone and other Europeans to pass the buck to us,” wrote Louis Marshall to Joseph Hyman. Marshall, the vice president of the Joint Distribution Committee and chairman of the Agro-Joint, continued in this letter to Hyman, the JDC’s vice chairman, “It would not do them much harm if they took off their coats and opened their purses to help people who are just as near to them as they are to us, instead of putting the entire burden upon the United States and to add to our numerous obligations at home, which they totally ignore.”2 These words came in reaction to an appeal sent that same year to Marshall by English Jewish philanthropists requesting that the JDC support the medical work of the two Societies for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish People, the one OZE (in Russian, Obshchestvo Zdravookhraneniia Evreev) and the other TOZ (in Polish, Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności Żydowskiej), both of which operated in eastern Europe. Accusations charging the Jews of western Europe with not participating vigorously enough in the reconstruction of postwar Jewish 94 > 95 of the “takers,” the recipients of the aid. On the one hand, the JDC encouraged them to become financially independent by over time decreasing their funds. On the other had, it restricted their attempts to raise funds among American Jewry, practically the only community at that period which had some resources. This conundrum tied the hands of OZE but at the same time made it impossible for the JDC to fulfill its own expectations. In order to understand the complicated and contradictory relationship which developed between the JDC and OZE-TOZE and the deleterious impact of 1929, a look backward is in order to the history of the beneficiary organization. OZE had been established in 1912 in St. Petersburg to improve the health of eastern European Jewry, based on a historical understanding of the physical evolution of the Jews, Jewish medicine, hygiene, and sanitation.5 Modeled on the Russian zemstvo (local self-government) system,6 it envisioned becoming a Jewish health organization that would take over the health system for the Jewish population in Russia. However, the outbreak of World War I, the increase in the number of Jewish refugees who faced a myriad of problems,7 and the collapse of the Russian Empire put OZE on a different path. It moved from being an organization aimed at providing social and preventive medicine to Russian Jewry to one which expanded its activity to include the Jews of other eastern European countries. It established local branches around eastern Europe and saw itself as providing both rescue and rehabilitation as a result of the war and its dislocations. In 1921 OZE branches in Poland took the name TOZ, and this change stemmed directly from the cooperation which flourished between the local activists and the JDC, as they worked together in a fight against contagious diseases common among local Jews and refugees.8 OZE-TOZ received most of its funding from the JDC, which had been founded in 1914 in New York by American Jews concerned about the fate of their coreligionists in the war-torn zones of Europe. Both organizations operated with an understanding that an improvement of the Jewish situation should include public health and social determinants of health. OZE-TOZ provided the local base for these activities, while the JDC provided the money, but both agreed with the need for an autonomous Jewish health system. The leaders of OZE-TOZ hoped to change the health situation among the Jews in order to enhance the 96 > 97 The Crisis of 1929 In 1929, as a result of the crash of the American stock market and its worldwide reverberations, OZE experienced its biggest financial crisis ever. The JDC, the central financer of its medical activity, sharply reduced its support for OZE and TOZ. Whereas in 1927 the funding agency had allocated OZE $48,000 and...

Share