(in Hebrew, Va'ad ha-Hatsala be-Kushta), representatives of the Jewish Agency's Joint Rescue Committee who were active in Istanbul, Turkey from late 1942 through 1944. All of the Jewish political movements in Palestine participated in this committee. Its goals were to make and maintain contact with the Jewish communities in Nazi-occupied Europe and communicate to them how concerned the Jews in Palestine were about them, and to implement aid and rescue operations. The committee worked out of Turkey because of that country's close proximity to the Balkan region where, when operations were started in late 1942, there were still Jews to be rescued---Jews who had not yet been slated for extermination by the Nazis.
The committee's work was divided into three areas of operation: making contact with Jews in occupied territories and exchanging information with them; transferring funds to the Jewish communities for various uses (such as for the Europa Plan, in which the Jewish communities of Europe tried to ransom Jewish lives by paying the Germans large amounts of money); and carrying out both "legal" and "illegal" immigration to Palestine. The committee considered any type of movement to Palestine to be the most reliable way of rescuing Jews.
