The American Jewish Emergency Effort for Biafran Relief began with 21 national Jewish organizations committed to humanitarian relief in Biafra. The Emergency Effort confined its activities to fundraising and decided to allocate its funds to existing relief organizations rather than endeavoring to provide aid and relief privately by itself. Within two weeks of the formation of the Emergency Effort, nearly $50,000 had been donated.
Irish priests campaigning in the US for increased aid and relief to Biafra met with leaders from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in July 1968, and the group spoke about the similarities between the images coming from Biafra and those that emerged after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. According to the AJC’s director of Interreligious Affairs, the photographs were “to Jewish eyes, 1968 version of photographs of Jewish children taken in the 1940’s in such other notorious sites [as] Bergen-Belsen, Thereisenstadt [sic], Auschwitz.”
see also:
Article: “Have you ever seen millions of children starving to death?” New York Times, Thursday, August 4, 1968
Book: “Auschwitz – Biafra” in Pogrom I, no. 4/5, August/September, 1970, cover page