File No. 861.48/448
The Secretary of State to the Treasurer of the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers ( Lehman)
Sir: The Department has been giving careful consideration to the question of continuing the relief work which is being carried on by your Committee among the Jews in that part of Russian Poland now occupied by the Germans, and has reached the conclusion that the method of sending this relief through the Spanish Ambassador in Berlin is not wholly desirable, and that a neutral committee should be formed in a neutral country with entirely new machinery for carrying on this work.
Realizing, however, the great suffering among the people to whom your Committee has been extending relief, the Department will raise no objection to the Spanish Ambassador here transmitting to the Spanish Ambassador in Berlin $100,000 to be distributed by the Spanish Ambassador in Berlin directly to the Russian committees in occupied Poland. In future, however, the relief funds should be transmitted through a committee in a neutral country, and I beg that you will take immediate steps to create this new machinery of distribution.
I am [etc.]
Assistant Secretary