Besides the U.S. food relief organizations, Strauss worked with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to relieve the suffering of Jewish refugees, who were often neglected by other bodies. Strauss acted as a liaison between Hoover's organization and JDC workers in a number of Central and Eastern European countries. Getting news in April 1919 of the Pinsk massacre, where during the Polish–Soviet War thirty-five Jews meeting to discuss the distribution of American relief aid were summarily executed by the Polish Army on the grounds they were Bolshevik conspirators, Strauss pressed the case to Hoover that a forceful response must be made to the Polish government. Hoover spoke to Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Jan Paderewski and demanded a fair investigation, but Strauss saw Paderewski as an anti-Semite who inherently believed that all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. After a while the situation for Jews in Poland did (temporarily) improve.