The First Holocaust

Jewish Fund Raising Campaigns with Holocaust Claims During and After World War One

by Don Heddesheimer

Appendix

1. Selected Book and Newspaper Excerpts

June 11, 1900, p. 7

"Rabbi Wise's Address

Rabbi Wise said, in part:

'The day will never come when I will care less for Zion, when there will be anyone who will strive more for the glorious ideals of Zionism.

'Two great conventions of Jews are being held tonight. In Chicago, there is a conference of charities called together by men who minister to the wants of the poor. They have assembled to see that too much charity is not given to the unworthy. Their purpose is right. But ours is the greater charity. We have assembled not to see that the Jew does not get too much, but that every Jew shall get the right to live.

'There are 6,000,000 living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favor of Zionism. They come not to beg, but ask for that which is higher than all material things. They seek to have satisfied the unquenchable thirst after the ideal. They ask to become once again the messengers of right, justice, and humanity.

'Your Christian friends will honor you if you have enough self-respect to care for your own people. Say that you are not a Jew and you will be hated as a Jew, nevertheless. But say that you are an American Jew, and strive for the best principles of the race, you will be respected and the Zionist name honored.

'Of Israel and Zion one thing is true. They can conquer. God is our leader, and with the General of the heavenly hosts to lead who will say that we go not to victory?

'In the old Greek games, the man who won the race was not he who went fastest, but the one who bore a lighted torch to the end of the course.

'We Zionists have entered a race, the torch of liberty, charity, and justice in our hands.

'The race will be won, not because we are fastest but because that lamp is a light unto the world. It will never be extinguished.

'Come, brothers, the lamp is in your hands, run the race and may God give you the victory forever."

January 14, 1915, p. 3:

"JEWS INDIFFERENCE TO WAR AID REBUKED

Louis Marshall Denounces Apathy Toward Suffering of Co-Religionists.

MILLIONS IN DIRE DISTRESS

Jacob H. Schiff, Meyer London, and Dr. Enelow Plead with the Rich to Give.

Louis Marshall, speaking at a meeting in Temple Emanu-El last night, deplored what he termed the failure of the Jews of America, particularly of New York, to realize the terrible calamity that has overtaken the millions of Jews whose homes are in the eastern theater of the European war.

The meeting was held in the interest of the American Jewish Relief Committee, of which committee Mr. Marshall was President. Besides Mr. Marshall Congressman-elect Meyer London, and the Rev. Dr. H.G. Enelow of the Temple Emanu-El, spoke. Like Mr. Marshall, each deplored the fact that the Jews of America have not given the assistance they should to their suffering co-religionists. Further emphasis on the same subject was contained in a letter from Jacob H. Schiff, read by Mr. Marshall.

'It is discouraging to those who have devoted so much time and energy to this work that there is so small a response from Jews in New York, a city which is so great a Jewish center. It seems to me that the people are so dazed by the European cataclysm that they are unable to realize that it is their duty to aid of those who are suffering through the calamity.

'In the world today there are about 13,000,000 Jews, of whom more than 6,000,000 are in the heart of the war zone; Jews whose lives are at stake and who today are subjected to every manner of suffering and sorrow, and the great American Jewish community is not doing its duty toward these sufferers. In the United Stated there are between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 Jews, nearly all able to do something and yet, after months of work, we have not raised more than $300,000. In New York there are more than a million Jews, some of them persons of great affluence, but many of them seem to think if they have given a few hundred dollars they have done their duty.

'We hear of pogroms in Russia, in Poland, in Galicia, and we sit indifferent. In Palestine, starvation stalks through the land. Shall we selfishly enjoy ourselves and say we would like to, but cannot help because of hard times, and think that we are doing our duty? No. The time has come for every man and woman and child to do his duty, and we must fulfill that duty quickly or it may be too late in hundreds of thousands of cases'

At this point Mr. Marshall read Mr. Schiff's letter. Mr. Schiff said his own interest in the work was intense, and that it should appeal to every Jew. Private reports he has received, Mr. Schiff said, showed conditions in Russia, Palestine, Poland, and Galicia, the frightful nature of which could not be pictured.

He said that the Emanu-El congregation is the largest and wealthiest in the United States and hoped that its members would give in proportion to their means. He further suggested a committee to canvass the congregation for a Temple Emanu-El fund and said he would contribute. Mr. Marshall put the suggestion in the form of a motion which was unanimously carried. Mr. Marshall will name the committee soon.

Mr. London said this was the 'worst period in Jewish history,' and that the having of millions of Jewish peoples depended on the generosity of more fortunate Jews of the United States. Dr. Enelow emphasized what Mr. Marshall had said and added that never before were the Jews of this country confronted with so great a duty."

May 22, 1916, p. 11

"700,000 Jews in need on the east war front

German Hebrew Relief Association, Striving to succor them, requires more food.

An associated press correspondence from Berlin said, 'of the normal total of about 2,450,000 Jews in Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, 1,770,000 remain, and of that number about 700,000 are in urgent and continuous want. About 455,000 of these are in Poland, and 50,000 of these numbers are persons who are without homes and in particularly distressful circumstances. The number of the needy is increasing from month to month. Opportunities to earn money are few, and thousands who are still living on their savings will, sooner or later, find these exhausted and become dependent on charity.

These estimates appear in the annual report of the German Hebrew Relief Association, which has taken upon itself the work of aiding co-religionists in the occupied districts of the battle line in Russia and Galicia. The sum of 500,000 marks monthly is required to alleviate the distress of the most necessitious of the 700,000 sufferers, and even that sum which is all that the relief association can devote to the work for the next few months, can do little more than keep them from starvation.

'With this sum 225 cities and villages in the occupied districts are being assisted. The Grand Lodge of B'nai B'rith in Germany has had a large share in the relief work, and more than a half million marks has thus far been received from America. Up to date nearly 2,250,000 marks has been paid out of the Hebrew Relief Association for Poland and Lithuania. Funds available have not been sufficient to afford relief to some 10,000 Jews in Courland, where the distress is not so great as in the other districts.

'Those activities have formed but a part of the work of the Relief Association. Quite as important and even more arduous has been its work as an intermediary between the residents of the occupied districts and the outside world. In this department no denominational distinctions were made, Jews and Catholics alike being aided. Chief advantage was taken of this work by relatives and friends in America of the Polish sufferers. About 8,000,000 marks has thus far been received from America for direct transmission, and the relief association handles as many as 100,000 letters monthly to and from America.

'A slight elevation of conditions may come from the recently secured permission of emigration from the occupied districts. Many families have already availed themselves of the permission, most of them going with tickets sent from America."

August 10, 1917

"Germans Let Jews Die. Women and Children in Warsaw Starving to Death

"Through the Intelligence Department of the Mayor's Committee on National Defense, the Provisional Zionist Committee last night made public a letter describing conditions among Jews in Warsaw under German rule. The name of the writer of this letter is not divulged for obvious reasons. The veracity and authenticity of the letter is vouched for by the Zionist Committee, of which Dr. Stephen S. Wise is chairman and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, honorary chairman. The letter says in part: 'Death from starvation is a real fact. It is witnessed here all over, in every street, in every step, in every house. Jewish mothers, mothers of mercy, feel happy to see their nursing babies die; at least they are through with their suffering.

'Our wealthiest people cut off their daughters' hair and sell it to be able to buy the indispensable things like bread for their dying children. Four and five year old children have become so weak they must be carried on their arms like babies. Fathers, should they return from the battlefield will meet of their five and six children they kissed good-by when they left for the war two or probably one or more. How long yet will this suffering last. From where will our help come. A commission has been sent to Switzerland to maintain our soup kitchens, but I doubt the success of their mission. Help us, help us. Awaken America. This is our only hope. Should America not aid us all will be lost."

The Jews in the Eastern War Zones

Published by the American Jewish Committee, 1916, pp. 7 to 21

"Introduction

Of all the people that have suffered deeply from the present war, none have borne a greater burden than the Jews — in physical and economic loss, in moral and spiritual torment.

Jews are today fighting each other in all the armies of Europe. Russia alone has 350,000 Jewish soldiers; Austria has over 50,000; altogether there are one-half million Jews in the ranks of the fighting armies.

The Jews are bearing the brunt of the war's burdens, not only on the field of battle, where they suffer with the rest of the world, but also in their homes, where they have been singled out, by their peculiar geographic, political and economic position, for disaster surpassing that of all others.

When the war broke out, one-half of the Jewish population of the world was trapped in a corner of Eastern Europe that is absolutely shut off from all neutral lands and from the sea. Russian Poland, where over two million Jews lived, is in a salient. South of it is Galicia, the frontier province of Austria. Here lived another million Jews. Behind Russian Poland are the fifteen Russian provinces, which together with Poland, constitute the Pale of Jewish Settlement. Here lived another four million Jews.

Thus seven million Jews — a population exceeding that of Belgium by one million-have borne the brunt of the war. Behind them was Holy Russia, closed to them by the May laws of 1881. In front were hostile Germany and Austria. To the south was unfriendly Rumania. They were overwhelmed where they stood; and over their bodies crossed and recrossed the German armies from the west, the Russian armies from the east and the Austrian armies from the south. True, all the peoples of this area suffered ravage and pillage by the war, but their sufferings were in no degree comparable to those of the Jews. The contending armies found it politic, in a measure, to court the good will of the Poles, Ruthenians and other races in this area. These sustained only the necessary and unavoidable hardships of war. But the Jews were friendless, their religion proscribed. In this medieval region all the religious fanaticism of the Russians, the chauvinism of the Poles, combined with the blood lusts liberated in all men by the war — all those fierce hatreds were sluiced into one torrent of passion which overwhelmed the Jews.

Hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes on a day's notice, the more fortunate being packed and shipped as freight — the old, the sick and insane, men, women and children, shuttled from one province to another, side-tracked for days without food or help of any kind — the less fortunate driven into the woods and swamps to die of starvation. Jewish towns were sacked and burned wantonly. Hundreds of Jews were carried off as hostages into Germany, Austria and Russia. Orgies of lust and torture took place in public in the light of day. There are scores of villages where not a single woman was left inviolate. Women, old and young, were stripped and knotted in the public squares. Jews were burned alive in synagogues where they had fled for shelter. Thousands were executed on the flimsiest pretext or from sheer purposeless cruelty.

These Jews, unlike the Belgians, have no England to flee to. The sympathy of the outside world is shut off from them. They have not the consolation of knowing that they are fighting for their own hearths, or even for military glory or in the hope of a possible reward of indemnity. The only thought they cherish is that after the struggle shall be over they may at last achieve those elementary rights denied to no other people, the right to live and move about freely in the land of their birth or adoption, to educate their children, to earn a livelihood, to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience.

Russia

Nearly half of the Jewish population of the world lives in Russia, in the immediate area of active hostilities, congested in cities, which are the first point of attack. The dreadful position of the Jews of Russia in normal times is well known. Forbidden to live outside of the enlarged Ghetto, known as the Pale of Settlement; burdened with special taxes; denied even the scant educational privileges enjoyed by the rest of the population; harried by a corrupt police, a hostile government and an unfriendly populace — in brief, economically degraded and politically outlawed — their condition represented the extreme of misery. It was the openly expressed policy of the reactionaries who ruled Russia to solve the Jewish question by ridding the country of the Jews. 'One-third will accept the Greek Church; one-third will emigrate to America; and one-third will die of starvation in Russia' — so ran the cynical saying. Some did abjure their faith, tens of thousands did starve in Russia and hundreds of thousands did emigrate to America.

Loyalty of Russian Jews

Then came the war. The Jews saw therein an opportunity to show the Christian population that in spite of all the persecutions of the past they were ready to begin life anew in a united and regenerated Russia. Thousands of Jewish young men who had been forced to leave Russia to secure the education which their own country denied them returned voluntarily to colors even though they knew that all hope of preferment and promotion was closed to them. On the field of battle the Jewish soldiers displayed courage and intelligence which won the respect of their fighting comrades and gained for them the much desired cross of St. George, granted for distinguished valor in the face of the enemy; while those who remained at home opened and equipped hospitals for wounded soldiers without distinction of race or creed, contributed generously to all public funds, and, in brief, gave themselves and their possessions unsparingly to the Russian cause.

It appeared at first as though the long desired union with the Russian people was about to be realized. But it soon developed that the chains which bound the Jews of Russia to their past could not be broken. Forces which they could not possibly control doomed them to the greatest tragedy in their history. The Pale in which they lived was Polish in origin and population. Poles and Jews were fellow victims of the Russian oppressor; but instead of being united by the common bond of suffering, they were separated by religious and racial differences and above all by dissension deliberately fostered among them by the Russian rulers until it developed into uncontrollable hate.

Russian Atrocities

Immediately before the war the struggle had assumed its bitterest form — that of unrelenting boycott waged against the Jews. When the war broke out the political status of the Poles changed overnight. Both the Russian and the German armies found it politic to cultivate the good will of the Polish population. Many Poles seized the opportunity to gratify personal animosity, religious bigotry or chauvinistic mania by denouncing the Jews, now to the one invader and now to the other, as spies and traitors. In Germany the animus of the attacks was to some extent uncovered and the lies refuted. But in Russia they found fertile soil. The Russian military machine had met with defeat at the hands of the Germans. To exonerate themselves in the eyes of their own people the military camarilla eagerly seized the pretext so readily furnished them by the Poles and unloaded the burden of their ill-fortune upon the helpless shoulders of the Jew. Men, women, even children were executed without the shadow of evidence or the formality of a trial. Circumstantial stories of Jewish treachery, invented by the Poles, were accepted as the truth and circulated freely through the Russian press and on the local government bulletin boards; but when official investigation proved those stories false in every particular, the publication of the refutation was discouraged by the censorship. The authorities gave the troops a free hand to loot and ravage, even encouraging them by the publication of orders which officially denounced all Jews as spies and traitors. The result was a series of outrages unprecedented even in Russia. A million Jews were driven from their homes in a state of absolute destitution.

Protest of Liberal Russia

All of the liberal elements of Russia protested against this campaign of extermination, but were powerless in the face of the military Government. Hundreds of municipal bodies, trades and professional organizations, writers, publicists and priests, petitioned the civil government to admit the Jews to human equality or at least suspend its policy of persecution. These memorials, together with the speeches delivered in the Duma, constitute a body of evidence from non-Jewish sources, which must condemn the Russian Government in the eyes of the world.

Galicia

During the ten months of the Russian occupation of Galicia, the Jews of that section suffered even more severely than did the Jews who dwelt in the Russian Pale. For here the Jews were the subjects of the enemy and no pretext was needed for their maltreatment. The Ruthenians and Poles who occupied the land were friendly to Russia, which promised them independence and power. But Russia could expect nothing from the Jews of Galicia, for they were already in the possessions of rights and liberties not enjoyed by the Jews of Russia, and the weight of the Russian invasion fell upon them mercilessly. Here thousands of Russian Jewish soldiers were forced to give up their lives in an attempt to impose on free Jews of Galicia the servitude from which they themselves so ardently longed to escape in Russia. They were forced to witness the desecration by their Russian companions-in-arms of synagogues, the outrage of Jewish women and the massacre of innocent and helpless civilians of their own faith.

Rumania

Though Rumania is not yet a belligerent, some of the Jews of that country have been vitally affected by the war. In July of 1915, the Ministry of the Interior issued a general order expelling the Jews of the towns near the Austro-Hungarian frontier into the interior. Though this order was later alleged to have been designed to prevent the operation of Jewish grain speculators from Bukowina, many Jews who had resided in the border towns for generations were summarily expelled.

This action of the Government was bitterly criticized by the liberal press and a memorial addressed to the King by the League of Native-born Jews, and the order was finally revoked.

Whether the present Balkan situation may or may not result in the entrance of Rumania among the belligerent nations there is no doubt that upon the termination of hostilities the question of Rumania's treatment of the Jews should be reopened.

Palestine

At the outbreak of the war Palestine contained, according to reliable estimates, about 100,000 Jews, some of whom were economically independent agriculturists, but the great majority of whom were aged pilgrims dependent upon their relatives and the good-will offerings of their pious co-religionists in Europe. The war cut them off completely from both the markets of Europe and from their relatives and friends; nearly the entire Jewish population was thus left destitute. Their position was further aggravated by the severity with which Turkey, upon her entrance into the war as an ally of the Central Powers, treated the nationals of hostile countries. About 8,000 Jews who declined to become Turkish subjects were either expelled or departed voluntarily.

Jews in Other Belligerent Countries

In all the countries where the Jews have heretofore enjoyed freedom there has been no special Jewish problem during this war. The Jews have identified themselves completely with the lands of their birth or adoption, and have shared the trials and glories of the peoples among whom their lot was cast.

In England, the Jewish population, according to estimates prepared by Lord Rothschild, furnished more than its share of recruits to the British army, its quota of 17,000 comprising about eight and a half percent of the total Jewish population as compared with six percent furnished by the non-Jewish population. The Lord Chief Justice, Baron Reading, a Jew, mobilized the financial resources of the country and was called upon to head the Anglo-French commission which negotiated the $500,000,000 credit secured in the United States. Lord Rothschild is treasurer of the Red Cross organization. Hon. Herbert Samuels is a member of the Coalition cabinet. A Jewish battalion organized by Palestinian fugitives rendered exceptional service to the allies in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Many rewards, including the bestowal of Victoria Crosses and promotions, are listed in the Anglo-Jewish press every week.

In Germany the Jews, although without complete social privileges, have borne their full share of the burdens of war. To Herr Ballin, the head of the mercantile marine, was given the task of organizing the national food supply, and other Jews have been prominently identified with every department of the industrial mobilization of the country. In France and Italy, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, Jews are to be found in the ministerial cabinets, in command of troops in the field, and prominent in charge of the medical service of the armies.

Thus the present war has again demonstrated the great truth that, in times of struggle as in times of peace, the Jews constitute a most valuable asset to those nations that accept them as an integral part of their population and permit them to develop freely, but wherever an autocratic government demoralizes its people by confronting them with the spectacle of an unprotected minority denied all human rights, the government itself feels the reaction and the moral tone of the nation is thereby impaired.[221]

Russia

Russia acquired the great bulk of her Jewish population through the partitions of Poland, from 1773 to 1795. Strongly medieval in outlook and organization as Russia was at that time, she treated the Jews with the exceptional harshness which the medieval principle and policy sanctioned and required. By confining them to those provinces where they happened to live at the time of the partitions, she created a Ghetto greater than any known to the Middle Ages; and by imposing restrictions upon the right to live and travel even within this Ghetto, she has virtually converted it onto a penal settlement, where six million human beings guilty only of adherence to the Jewish faith are compelled to live out their lives in squalor and misery, in constant terror of massacre, subject to the caprice of police officials and a corrupt administration-in short, without legal right or social status.

Only twice within the last century have efforts been made to improve the conditions of the Jews in Russia; and each interval of relief was followed by a period of greater and more cruel repression. The first was during the reign of Alexander the Second; but his assassination in 1881 resulted in the complete domination of Russia by the elements of reaction, which immediately renewed the persecution policy. The 'May laws' of Ignatieff (1882) which enmesh the Jews to this day, were the immediate product of this regime. The second period, a concomitant of the abortive revolution of 1904-5, was followed by a 'pogrom policy' of unprecedented severity which lasted until the outbreak of the present war.

The Pale of Settlement

At the beginning of the war the number of Jews in the Russian Empire was estimated at six million or more, comprising fully half of the total Jewish population of the world. Ninety-five percent of these six million people were confined by law to a limited area of Russia, known as the Pale of Settlement, consisting of the fifteen Governments of Western and Southwestern Russia, and the ten Governments of Poland, much of which territory is now under German occupation. In reality, however, residence within the Pale was further restricted to such an extent that territorially the Jews were permitted to live in only one two-thousandth part of the Russian Empire. No Jew was permitted to step outside this Pale unless he belonged to one of a few privileged classes. Some half-privileged Jews might, with effort, obtain special passports for a limited period of residence beyond the Pale; but the great majority could not even secure this privilege for any period whatsoever. A tremendous mass of special restrictive legislation converted the Pale into a kind of prison with six million inmates, guarded by an army of corrupt and brutal jailers.

The Recent Abolition of the Pale

In August 1915, the Council of Ministers issued a decree permitting the Jews of the area affected by the war to move into the interior of Russia. This act has been supposed in some quarters to constitute the virtual abolition of the Pale, this interpretation being chiefly attributable to the extensive publicity given the measure by the Russian government; but the evidence, official and otherwise, clearly indicates that far from being a generous act of a liberal Government toward an oppressed people, it is in reality only a temporary expedient, dictated mainly by military necessity and partly by the need of a foreign loan; it is evident that it was granted grudgingly, with galling limitations which served to emphasize the servile state of the Jews; that it is in practice ignored or evaded at the convenience of the local authorities; and that it has been utilized, if not designed, to mislead the public opinion of the world."

March 3, 1919, p. 1

"PRESIDENT GIVES HOPE TO ZIONISTS

Tells Delegation He Approves Plan for a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine.

DR. WISE DEFENDS ENGLAND — Says at Mass Meeting- League of Nations Means Justice to World's Weakest Peoples

Special to the New York Times. — Washington, March 2, 1919.

Approval of the plans of Zionist leaders for the creation of a national Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine was given tonight by President Wilson to a delegation of representative American Jewish Leaders who spent an hour at the White House in conference with the President over the international status of Jews around the world. The delegation was headed by Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise of New York, and also included Judge Julian W. Mack of Chicago, Louis Marshall of New York, and Bernard J. Richards of New York, members of the delegation to the Paris Peace Conference recently named by the American Jewish Congress.

Here is the word of promise that was given to the delegation by the President:

'As for your representations touching Palestine, I have before this expressed my personal approval of the declaration of the British Government regarding the aspirations and historic claims of the Jewish people in regards to Palestine. I am, moreover, persuaded that the allied nations, with the fullest concurrence of our own Government and people, are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish Commonwealth,'

The delegation presented to the President a memorial setting forth the present status of the Jews in eastern Europe and the effect upon them of the creation of new and enlarged states — Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. The delegation also presented the resolution adopted by the American Jewish Congress held in Philadelphia last December which set forth the guarantees considered necessary for securing fundamental human rights to Jews throughout the world.

After the conference the delegates stated that they had always found the President, 'as always, sympathetic with the incontestable principle of the right of the Jewish people everywhere to equality of status.'

Meeting Cheers Wilson's Words

On leaving the White House Rabbi Wise and Justice Mack went to a mass meeting in the auditorium of the Central High School, the largest meeting place in Washington [D.C.]. Three thousand persons had crowded into it, but large numbers were unable to gain admittance.

Rabbi Wise spoke of the aspirations and hopes of American Jews and of Jewry around the world, told of his recent visit to Paris, in its bearing on the Peace Conference, and discussed the League of Nations, predicting that it would be part of the final Peace Treaty. After making the announcement of the President's attitude toward the Zionist movement and quoting amid the greatest enthusiasm what was said, Rabbi Wise exclaimed:

'I believe that England should be the mandatory for the League of Nations for the Jewish National Commonwealth to be established in Palestine and I, here and now, make the prophecy that Great Britain will accept the mandate over Palestine. He wrongs, slanders, and libels Great Britain who asserts that England in her attitude towards Palestine wants to spread out her dominions. I know whereof I speak, when I assert, following my recent visit to Paris and London, that England will never accept a mandate over Palestine except in response to a mandate from the League of Nations, and when England does accept such a mandate it will mean that the Jewish people of the world have again come to their rightful place in the world.

The formation of the League of Nations means two things. It means justice from the greatest of the nations and justice to the weakest of the peoples of the earth. I am almost terrified by some of the formidable arguments against the League of Nations I have heard in the last few days. We have been told that if we want peace all we have to do is to come back from Europe and let Europe fight it out without any League of Nations being formed.

We tried that once. We tried that from August, 1914, until we entered the war in April, 1917, when we had to make up our minds that when the liberty of the world was invaded the liberty of America was also threatened. We would go to war tomorrow under the same circumstances, only if we had the same circumstances tomorrow in the light of recent history, we would go to war a little earlier.

The real question now is whether we will form a League of Nations, whether we will stay where we are and help keep the peace of the world, or come back here and have to go back and make war again. Instead of going there again to make war let us stay there and make peace. I prophesy here and now that the Peace Conference will not adjourn without making provision for a League of Nations. A am not undertaking to say whether we should undertake a mandate under the League of Nations. But I am not willing to say, as an American, that we should accept all of the advantages flowing out of a League of Nations and not be willing to assume our responsibilities under such a league.

America and Armenia

'I firmly believe that if the League should turn to America and point to Armenia, wounded, broken, and helpless, and ask us to take Armenia and bind up her wounds until such a day as she was able to stand alone, America would accept such a mandate.'

Rabbi Wise said the Jews of the world would have to thank America and the Allies for the recreation of the Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. It was not his idea that all the Jews could or would go to Palestine. Palestine, he said, could not begin to find room for the Jewry of the world.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'little more than a fourth of the Jews of the world will be able to go there. When the national home is established for the Jews in Palestine it will be a home for the homeless, wronged and disinherited Jews and a radiating center of light and inspiration to all the Jews of the world. The rebuilding of Zion will be the reparation of all Christendom for the wrongs done to the Jews. [Emphasis added]

Dr. Wise resented the imputation in connection with the ongoing investigation that Russian Bolsheviks and Russian Jews were synonymous.

Bolshevism, he said, was not a Jewish phenomenon. Admitting that a considerable number of Jews held office under the Bolsheviks, it must be remembered that these Jews who had returned to Russia included many of the 'all but crucified exiles.' He asserted, on authority of Kerensky, that 80 to 95 percent of the millions of Jews are against Bolshevism, as they ought to be.

'I consider it a grave wrong against a whole people to speak of Bolshevism and the Russian Jew as if these were interchangeable terms,' continued Dr. Wise. 'Even though a handful of Bolshevist leaders may be perfidious outcasts, the great leaders among the Russian Jews are against Bolshevism. Are all Jews to be damned because a few Jews are damnable? I had not thought that was the real Christian or American way. Russian Jewry and half of the world Jewry are broken for a time. The responsibility rests with the American Jewry.'

The four members of the delegation headed by Rabbi Wise, who will leave for Paris soon, arrived in Washington this morning and spent most of the day in conference with Louis D. Brandeis, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who has been very actively supporting the Zionist movement."

"Washington, March 2, 1919 (Associated Press.)

In his speech at Washington High School tonight, Dr. Wise, referring to an unpublished document placed in the records of the Senate Committee, which he said purported to be a list of Jews in India, Russia and elsewhere who were used as agents by the German Government to stir up social unrest in those countries, declared the information in the document was erroneous. He described its author as 'either a madman or a foul and loathsome knave.'"

"ACTION OF CONFERENCE SATISFIES ZIONISTS

Dr. Weissman [sic] Says Palestine Will See First Fruits of League of Nations.

By Walter Duranty.

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Paris, February 28. — 'We are very well satisfied with the reception given by the Peace Conference to the Zionists' claims,' said Dr. [Chaim] Weissman [sic], Chairman of the British Zionist Committee, who has been the central figure of the organization in Paris. 'The principal Allied statesmen have shown sympathy with Zionist aims, and yesterday's hearing set the seal of the formal approval of the Conference as a body.

We have obtained full recognition of the historic title of the Jewish people to Palestine and of the Jews' right to reconstitute their national home there. By national home I mean the creation of such conditions as will enable large numbers of Jews to travel to Palestine, to settle there on a self supporting basis, to found their own schools, universities and other institutions — in short, to establish an administration that will carry out our program and ultimately make Palestine as Jewish as America is American.

For the present that is the limit of the Zionist aims. We want it understood that the immediate formation of a Jewish State or Commonwealth is not contemplated. Today, and doubtless for some years to come, Jewish settlers in Palestine will actually be in a considerable minority as compared with the non-Jewish inhabitants of the country. There can be no question of that minority imposing its will upon the majority. Our position will be the first great experiment of the League of Nations mandatory system by which people not yet ready for independent self-government will gradually rise thereto under the tutelage of the great powers.

We have asked that the British should be appointed. For centuries the Jews have been scattered among the nations of the world, and we know which are our friends. First among them are the English-speaking peoples, educated on the Bible, just as the Jews have been. We chose Great Britain partly owing to the doubt as to whether the United States would be willing to accept obligations in the Near East, partly because of geographical considerations and because of Great Britain's great and varied experience with all kinds of races and constitutions. Under her direction the whole of Palestine from the Lebanon Province to the Egyptian frontier and from the sea to the Hedjaz Railway will be open to Jewish settlements, which will automatically develop into an autonomous Jewish commonwealth.

Thus the League of Nations has made it possible to give expression to the centuries old desire of the Jewish race. Jews everywhere are ardent supporters of the League, and owe a deep debt of gratitude to President Wilson for his advocacy of the principles by which our return to our ancestral home will be brought about.

We have asked that Great Britain shall place Palestine under a suitable political administration and economic conditions, shall promote Jewish immigration and settlements on the land, and shall seek the cooperation of a Jewish council representing the Jews of Palestine. Concessions for the benefit of Palestine will be granted by Great Britain to this council with a proviso that the latter not be prohibited from using them for private profit.

Finally, we have agreed to accept the original stipulation of the British Government as follows:

It is clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status of Jews living in other countries.

You see our aims for the present are modest and cautious. Later, an Independent Government of Palestine will be a natural outgrowth of the new circumstances and conditions."

September 29, 1919, p. 7

"FELIX M. WARBURG TELLS SAD PLIGHT OF JEWS.

Felix M. Warburg Says They Were the Worst Sufferers in War.

Felix M. Warburg, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, who returned several days ago from a trip to Europe for that organization, made public yesterday some of his findings.

'The successive blows of contending armies have all but broken the back of European Jewry,' he said, 'and have reduced to tragically unbelievable poverty, starvation and disease about 6,000,000 souls, or half the Jewish population of the earth.

'The Jewish people throughout Eastern Europe, by sheer accident of geography, have suffered more from the war than any other element of the population. The potential vitality and the capacity for self-help that remains to those people after the last five years is amazing to me.'

The people are deeply moved by the help given them by America, Mr. Warburg said, but it would be fatal to lessen the emergency aid now while millions are in tragic need. The $30,000,000 spent by this committee, he said, has fed and clothed more than a million children and it has renewed the hope of five million parents and elders.

'For more than four years,' he said, 'The war on the Eastern front was fought largely in the congested centers of Jewish population. A straight north and south line from Riga, on the Baltic, to Salonica, on the Aegean Sea, will touch every important battle area of the Eastern war zone and every center of Jewish population. After the cataclysm of the last few years it is too much to expect this Jewry to become self-sustaining in a short twelve-month.'

Mr. Warburg is concerned over the program soon to be started for the discontinuance of emergency relief. This plan, he said, calls for the formation of a $10,000,000 reconstruction corporation.

'This organization,' he said, 'would afford facilities for constructive aid to Jews abroad in the way of loans and credit at nominal interest rates. The value of this sort of assistance as a substitute for pure charity is apparent.'

Other relief projects recommended by Mr. Warburg include the establishment of an express company to forward money and packages from Jews in this country to relatives and friends abroad; the distribution of $120,000 worth of fuel in sections of Poland where destitution is greatest; the purchase of $300,000 worth of cloth in the bolt whereby unemployed workmen of Poland may get raw material, and a plan to reunite those Jewish families that have relatives in the United States and those who have become separated abroad."

October 26, 1919, Section 2, page 1

"SPENDS $2,000,000 IN ONE BARGAIN HUNT

Miss Lowenstein Tells of Buying for 4,000,000 Starving Jews of Eastern Europe.

ARMY FILLS HER ORDERS

Purchases Range from Hardtack to Hobnailed Boots-Soap the First Big Need Supplied.

A three week shopping tour, in which she spent $2.000,000 for a 'family' of 4,000,000 people, is the record of Harriet B. Lowenstein, a representative of the Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, who returned recently from Eastern Europe. In a statement issued yesterday by the committee it was said that Miss Lowenstein's purchases virtually saved the lives of the Jews of Eastern Europe who were dying of starvation.

Miss Lowenstein snapped up every bargain offered by the Liquidation Bureau of the United States Army, from hardtack to hobnailed boots and from soap to motor trucks! On her arrival in Paris she met Lewis Strauss, secretary to Herbert Hoover, and learned of the terrible conditions in the European countries, and from Poland she received word to spend $2,000,000 on behalf of 4,000,000 destitute Jews.

'I didn't know what to get,' said Miss Lowenstein, 'and I didn't know where to get it. All I knew was that it must be done. Luckily, when I got to Paris Louis Marshall, Chairman of the Jewish delegation to the Peace Conference, and Dr. Cyrus Adler were still there. They took me to see Judge Parker of Texas, who was in the Liquidation Bureau of the United States Army.

'Has the army anything to sell?' we asked him.

Why, yes, it has quite a few things, here and there, he said.

'Could we see them?' we asked. 'We have to get several train loads off to Poland right away.'

It turned out that the things weren't in Paris. To get her bargains, Miss Lowenstein had to attend a series of Monday morning sales, so to speak, all through France. The salvage department of the United States Army were her wholesale stores. Her shopping tour might take her to Bordeaux for olive oil, and to Tours for blankets, and to Toule for medicine, but what ease can a bargain finder expect?

'The first thing I did,' she said, 'was to borrow an army car, and run down to Gievres, which I was told was one center for their Liquidation Board. In the three days and three nights that I stayed there, I bought enough stuff to fill thirty-nine freight cars, which were leant to me through the courtesy of the army, and of the Liquidation Board.

'The first thing I bought was a lot of soap. Nobody had told me to do that, but we had reports about the filth and disease in Poland, and it seemed to me that soap was a luxury we couldn't get along without. The men said that they thought I must be going to scrub all Poland up, when they saw my freight car full of soap.

'There were thousands of cases of typhus in Poland among the destitute Jews, and I wanted to send beds, but I knew that was impossible, as we could get only the space on the ships as Mr. Hoover could spare us. So I figured that the best thing to do would be to send three carloads of army blankets. 80,000 bed sheets, and 150,000 pillowcases. I managed to get 1,000 cots and 1,000 mattresses in, without being stopped.

Miss Lowenstein did not find all of these things conveniently laid out for her at Gievres, by any means. She had scoured France of them, by this time. Then, when her things were packed into the boat, she heard that medicines were to be procured at Toule, and rushed off to buy them.

'Medicines were one thing of which I knew practically nothing at all,' she said. 'So I just bought the things that I thought women of common sense could use, without doctors and without nurses — quinine, cathartics, typhoid disinfectants, anesthetics, (I had heard that operations were constantly being performed without anything of the kind in Poland,) and simple things of the kind. I also got twenty surgical cases, the kind they used in the field of battle, and a large quantity of ninety five percent pure alcohol at 72 cents a gallon — another bargain, as anyone who has bought it here must know. Then, because I knew the children were suffering from malnutrition, and that the Jewish youngsters couldn't eat most fats, because of their religion, I got all the pure olive oil the Army had, at $1.75 a gallon.

All this while, the entire Army was helping Miss Lowenstein with her bargains, just as if they had been real salesmen and she a real buyer with a big order to place. Through their help, Miss Lowenstein was able to get hold of 400,000 pounds of hardtack, for the hungriest region in the world, the desolate territory east of the Bug River, where thousands of Jewish children were dying of starvation. Relief workers say that this despised food of the doughboys saved the lives of a host of youngsters there, Along with this hardtack, Miss Lowenstein sent about a carload of condensed milk.

'I knew that the Jewish people in these lands had hardly a ray of hope left to them,' she explained. 'I knew that fathers were watching their children starve, and that mothers were having to leave their babies dead along the roads they trod as returning refugees. And I knew that it must seem to the stricken Jewish people of Poland that they had not even the consolation of religion left, when they could not get the candles that their creed requires them to keep burning on the Sabbath day while they say their blessing. So I got as many candles and matches as I possibly could — at least 100,000 of the candles. 'What are you going to do with so many?' the army men asked, and because I didn't want to give them a sentimental woman-reason, I told them that the candles were to keep the rats away from the dead in the horrible cellars where so many of the destitute Jews live in Poland. This was perfectly true, too, but my chief reason was the other one.

Miss Lowenstein followed her bargains to Eastern Europe, where she had the satisfaction of seeing how much good they were doing, and the unhappiness of knowing that millions of dollars worth of supplies were still needed, if the Jewish race was to be saved.

Without doubt, hundreds of thousands of Jews in eastern Europe will die this winter, unless the United States comes to their aid,' said Miss Lowenstein. 'More important even than food or medicine is the fact that the American Relief Administration, the Red Cross, and the American Jewish relief agencies have given these little people a little ray of hope, after the blackness of five years of war and starvation. If that hope fails them now, they will die."

December 3, 1919, p. 19

"SAYS TEN MILLIONS FACE HUNGER DEATH

Morgenthau Urges America to Try to Save Dying Nations of the Old World

Describes Scenes He Saw

Ex-Ambassador Convinced Nothing Except Miracle Can Prevent Great Horror Winter Holds in Store

Washington, Dec.2 — In an address here tonight, Henry Morgenthau, former American Ambassador to Turkey, said that 'nothing on earth except a miracle can prevent the death by freezing and starvation of from 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 people in Europe and the Middle East this Winter.'

Many prominent officials were in the audience that heard Mr. Morgenthau, who recently had returned to this country from an official mission to Poland.

'I wished that I could adequately describe a scene which I witnessed in Pinsk last August,' said Mr. Morgenthau. 'It has haunted me ever since and has served as a complete expression of the misery and injustice which is prevalent over such a large part of the world today. A few months before my arrival a particularly atrocious Jewish massacre had taken place.

'A Polish officer with troops had entered an assembly hall where the leading Jewish residents had gathered, arrested them, and marched them hurriedly to the public square. He took thirty-five men, and in the dim light of an automobile lamp, placed them against a Cathedral and shot them in cold blood. A somewhat hazy charge had been made that these men were Bolsheviks, but no trial was given them and indeed, the charge was subsequently shown to be untrue.

'Returning to the scene of the execution the next morning the troops found that three of the victims were still breathing: these they dispatched with bullets and all thirty-five corpses were thrown into a pit in an old Jewish cemetery, without an opportunity for decent burial or religious exercises and with nothing to mark the graves.

'A proceeding to make one shudder, it is true, yet not a particularly horrible event compared with the crimes that have been perpetrated in Central Europe, in the Balkans, and in Asia Minor in the last five years. The lives of only thirty five Jews were sacrificed, but in a few months nearly a million Armenians were destroyed under conditions that were far more hideous. It was the scene which I witnessed in my visit that I wish particularly to bring to your minds.

'Up to the time not a single Jew had been permitted to visit that cemetery. But I was allowed to inspect the scene of this martyrdom; and, when I entered, a great crowd of Jews who had followed me also went in. As soon as they reached the burial place of their relatives they threw themselves as a mass upon the ground, and set up a wailing that still rings through my ears. It was the anguish cry of a terribly persecuted race; to my mind it expressed the misery of centuries and the misery not only of the Jews, but the numerous other people that for ages have looked for justice and have not found it.

That same evening I attended divine services at the synagogue. Inside this building a crowd of more than 5000 had gathered to express their grief for the loss of their leaders. This large mass of men, women and children screamed until it seemed that the heavens would burst. I had read of such public expressions of agony in the Old Testament, but this is the first time I completely realized what the collective grief of a persecuted community was like. To me it has remained a pitiful memory and symbol of the cry for help that is going forth from a great part of Europe.'

In conclusion, Mr. Morgenthau said: 'You can travel for days in Eastern Europe and see no faces that are not truly emaciated, and gaze into eyes that are not dull and almost expressionless from lack of food.

'At this moment the greatest problem facing the American people is this: Are we going to stand aside while Europe flounders in agony into dissolution, or are we to rise to our opportunity and our duty and rescue these suffering peoples? Emerson said that 'America represented God's last attempt to save mankind.' It certainly looks as though the time when we were to make good this prophecy had arrived.

'Third is something in this opportunity that appeals to the historic imagination. The woes of Armenia are directly connected with the development of the United States. It was the Turkish conquest of Asia Minor and Constantinople which shut off the centuries-old trade route to the East and thus led to that search for that eastward route which culminated in the discovery of America. It would be nothing more than historic justice if this new country should be the means saving from destruction not only what is left of the Armenians but saving also the other despairing peoples of Eastern and Central Europe. All the people are really brothers.

'The great impulse must come from this side of the Atlantic. I have already said that Europe is today facing a dissolution not unlike that which overwhelmed her when the Roman Empire fell. But the world situation today presents one great contrast to that of nearly two thousand years ago. The Roman Empire fell through its own vices and miseries, it fell because there was no outside force that would come to the rescue."

December 3, 1919, p. 24

"Five Million Face Famine in Poland

American Jewish Relief and Red Cross Societies Fighting Disease and Hunger.

Many Children Stunted — A New Malady Spreading Blindness Among War Refugees — Typhus Toll Is Heavy.

Five million people east of the River Bug in the new Poland are at the point of starvation, according to a statement made public yesterday by the American Jewish Relief Committee as a result of investigation by the American Red Cross and the American Jewish Relief Agents. The vast region, from which there has been practically no news in five years, has just been penetrated by the American Red Cross and the American Jewish Relief Committee's representatives.

'The war has left 5,000,000 destitute and stricken Jews in Eastern Europe,' the statement says, 'a number as great as the entire population of New York City, utterly helpless, in many cases sick, in every case hungry and dependent.

'East of the River Bug these people are living in devastated houses, in stalls of old stables, on roofless platforms built for refugee families, one family to a platform, in old freight cars, in holes in the ground, or under the open sky. They are weak from many months of semi-starvation, for they have gone for five years without one square meal. They are still terror-stricken from the war. Their number is being reduced every day by a series of the most terrible epidemics that ever swept any section of the world.

'Typhus, cholera and smallpox are all raging in the territory east of the River Bug. No estimate of the actual number of those smitten with typhus in Poland has yet been compiled, but it probably is greater than in Siberia, where the American Red Cross found 100,000 cases. Dirt and malnutrition are the two great causes of the epidemic of disease.

'All through Poland may be found children of eight or ten years old no larger than youngsters half their age ordinarily are. Two out of three infants do not survive their first year of life. The average child in the territory east of the Bug River has never tasted milk, even mother's milk. American Red Cross investigators say that an abnormal number of children are born blind, because of the malnutrition of their mothers. American Jewish relief investigators discovered a new eye disease that had attacked thousands of children, beginning with constant blinking and ending in total blindness, resulting when long-continued starvation had affected the muscles of the eyes.

In the battle against disease that is going on in the territory east of the Bug River the American Red Cross is fighting the former with medicines and doctors and attempts toward cleanliness, while the American Jewish relief workers have entered the lists against hunger, with soup kitchens and milk stations, and Children's Relief Bureaus, established here and there, all through the vast stretch of territory.

'If all of the people in the territory east of the Bug River could be fed properly at once, disease would soon disappear, doctors in this afflicted region say. If they could replace the rags which they have worn since the beginning of the war with fresh clothing, the epidemics would cease to spread. If their living places could be made habitable and clean, it would no longer be as it is today the most desolate expanse of land in the world. It is toward this end that the two great organizations, one of Gentiles and the other of Jews, are working hand in hand, differences of creed forgotten, in the great practical need that they face."

April 21, 1920, Editorial, p. 8

"A WORK OF MERCY.

Hitherto the Jews have financed their own philanthropies and with a liberality and skill that has been universally recognized. In behalf of those of their religion who are still suffering in the war-ridden districts of Europe they are now for the first time seeking outside aid.

With the fate of Belgium and Serbia it was easy to sympathize. A nation's territory was invaded and its citizens were making a united stand. The Jews have no fatherland, no means of uniting in the common defense. Yet from the outset, wherever the call came, they fought, and fought bravely, for the allied cause. Meantime, in widely scattered lands the folk at home suffered as perhaps those of no other people, and their suffering has in many localities outlasted the war.

In Europe there are today more than 5,000,000 Jews who are starving or on the verge of starvation, and many are in the grip of a virulent typhus epidemic. An appeal has been issued throughout the world. The quota of New York City is $7,500,000. The drive will occupy the week of May 2-9, and will be based wholly upon the principle of sympathy and a common humanity."

May 2, 1920, Section 2, page 1

"JEWS ASK PUBLIC TO AID WAR VICTIMS

Non-Sectarian Appeal for $7,500,000 Starts Today with Sermons in All Churches.

POLAND'S WOE APPALLING

Campaign to be Pressed by 10,000 Active Workers, in the Five Boroughs.

A famished child upon the auction block, a mother in the foreground pleading for aid, death with outstretched arms lurking near and the legend, 'Shall Death Be the Highest Bidder?'

Such is the pictorial representation of the needs of stricken peoples in the war devastated zones of Central and Eastern Europe which will confront New Yorkers everywhere today. Back of that representation stands an organization designed to take advantage of every channel to press home to the people of this city the need for contributing toward the $7,500,000 to be raised here this week by the Greater New York Appeal for Jewish War Sufferers.

This fund is but a tithe of that which must be subscribed in the entire country if disaster to whole peoples is to be averted. The world nature of the calamity which has overtaken men, women and children, deprived not only of life's bare necessities but of all means of rehabilitating themselves without aid from the outside, has led leading Jews of New York and the nation to turn to the public, irrespective of creed, for help. Heretofore the Jews themselves have contributed many, many millions which have been expended by the Joint Distribution Committee through relief agencies of all countries and without regard to the religious beliefs of those in need. This time the burden is too gigantic to be borne by Jews alone.

Millions Racked by War.

A pen picture of actual conditions, typical of those in several countries, has been sent to the Campaign Committee by Dr. Boris B. Bogen of this city, now in Warsaw as head of the First Relief Unit, sent abroad by the Joint Distribution Committee. Dr. Bogen writes:

'Hunger, cold rags, desolation, disease, death — Six million human beings, without food, shelter, clothing or medical treatment in what now are but the wastes of once fair lands, lands ravaged by long years of war or blighted by its consequences!

'That, in a few words, is the actual situation in all those countries that constituted what was known during the great conflict as the Eastern theater of war.

'Words cannot adequately convey nor can any picture be drawn which can bring home to comfortable, affluent, happy New Yorkers, surrounded by their families and friends, riding in their automobiles, enjoying every luxury, the utter, abject, hopeless misery confronting the population of these lands, a population about equal to that of New York City itself.

'If you would try to visualize, to realize the situation, place yourself at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street.

'The once teeming avenue is all but deserted. Gone are the gay equipages, their bejeweled occupants and liveried attendants. No longer are the sidewalks filled with a surging crowd of gaily dressed men and women. The street is all but still. Laughter and lively chatter are heard no more.

'Instead, old men lean for support against the buildings. Mothers, with dying babes tugging vainly at their breasts, sit along the curb. The flower of what was once young manhood and womanhood of the city is not in the picture, for they, by thousands and tens of thousands, lie stricken in the overcrowded hospitals, laid low by the breath of a pestilence.

Too Weak to Cry For Bread.

'Little children, with wasted frames and swollen bodies, cling to their mothers' rags, too weak even to cry for bread that is not to be had.

'A bitter wind sweeps the avenue from the north. A man — his tatters cannot be called clothes — his face blue and pinched, looks at you with unseeing eyes. You do not at first recognize him. It then dawns upon you that you have seen that face before. It is the face of a friend, a man who but a few short months before was well-to-do, a banker, as prosperous, well fed and well dressed as you are now. He reaches out his arms toward you and falls at your feet. You stoop down to lift him up. He is dead! Hunger did it.

'The scene is not exaggerated, not overdrawn. It has its exact counterpart in hundreds of cities, towns and villages throughout Central and Eastern Europe at this very moment. The call comes from one human being to another, from those who have less than nothing to those who have much. It is the call of humanity.

'At no time during the war, in any land, not either in Belgium or Northern France, was there a situation more critical, a need more great, a demand for sacrifice and help more insistent than now comes from Eastern and Central Europe. Both the present and future existence of an entire people are at stake.'

The campaign is receiving the active cooperation and support of Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes of the Roman Catholic Diocese, Bishop Luther B. Burch of the Episcopal Diocese, Bishop Luther B. Wilson, President of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church; Miss Evangeline Booth, Commander of the Salvation Army.

Members of the Executive Committee include Cleveland H. Dodge, Treasurer of the Committee for the Relief in the Near East; President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University, George Gordon Battle, Otto T. Bannard, John G. Ager, the Rev. Dr. David J. Burrell, Robert Grier Cooke, Paul G. Cravath, Francis D. Gallatin, Charles H. Sabin, President of the Guaranty Trust company; former Attorney General George W. Wickersham, Judge Joseph F. Mulqueen, Judge William H. Widhams and Alfred E. Marling.

The appeal is to be brought home forcibly to the people of New York in many ways. Today is Church Sunday, and there will be special sermons in the churches of all denominations. The Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman has prepared a model sermon for Protestant churches. Vicar General Joseph F. Mooney has written a message to the Roman Catholic churches, and Dr. Nathan Stern, rabbi of the West End Synagogue, prepared an appeal to be read to the Jewish congregations.

Children in the public schools, through the cooperation of the Board of Education, are to hear the story of the sufferings of the children in other lands. In theaters, moving-picture houses, clubs, hotels and restaurants, in short wherever people are gathered together, the conditions they are asked to alleviate will be made clear to them.

It is estimated that not fewer than 10,000 active workers have been enlisted in the cause in the five boroughs. The organization for the campaign has been divided into three parts: The organization of the trades and industries, so that not a single business or profession in the city has been overlooked; the women's division, embracing 3,000 women workers under the leadership of Mrs. I. Unterberg, Mrs. Samuel C. Lampert and Mrs. S.S. Prince, which has divided the city into districts: the women organized the schools and churches and will make a direct appeal to the homes and to the neighborhood storekeepers: the third organization is that of the boroughs, each borough, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond, having a borough organization."

May 3, 1920, Editorial, p. 12

"THE JEWISH WAR SUFFERERS.

The non-sectarian character of the drive on behalf of the Jewish war sufferers was emphasized in the appeal which marked its formal beginning yesterday. An accompanying letter was signed by Evangeline Booth of the Salvation Army, Bishop Burch, Archbishop Hayes and many other representatives of Christian churches. A statement of the nature of the crisis was prepared by the Rev. Dr. S. Parker Cadman and sent to every Protestant minister in the city to serve as the basis for an announcement from the pulpit. A similar statement for the Catholic churches was sent out by Mgr. Joseph F. Mooney.

Hitherto the Jews have financed their own charities, and with a liberality and skill that has been universally recognized. The present need transcends the means of any single sect and centers in a catastrophe which threatens the entire world. In Russia and the neighboring countries the Jews have been subjected to a particularly malignant persecution which has not ended with the war. Without any national organization of their own, they have no central organization to appeal to. Living in segregated and generally impoverished communities, their misery is cumulative to an extent unknown among other sufferers. It is estimated that more than five millions are actually starving or on the verge of starvation, and a virulent typhus epidemic is raging among them and is already spreading among the neighboring populations. Both in intensity and the extent of present suffering and in the menace it holds out for all Europe, the situation is one which directly concerns the public of all races and creeds.

The quota of New York City is $7,500,000. On the American Joint Distribution Committee are Professor Harry Fisher of Chicago, Professor Israel Friedlander, Max Pine and Maurice Kass. In their work of distributing food and medical aid through the ghettos of Central Europe they are obliged to proceed without the protection of the Government of the United States which has no diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia. Ample precautions will be taken, however, to make sure that the supplies will be used for the purpose in hand. It is a work of mercy that makes a peculiar appeal to both the hearts and the interests of a common humanity."

January 9, 1922, p. 19

"BRITISH CHIEF RABBI CONDEMNS SILENCE ON POGROMS CARRIED OUT IN UKRAINE

London, Jan 8 (Associated Press).

At the second annual conference of the Federation of Ukrainian Jews the Very Rev. Joseph H. Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, called attention to the 'astonishing fact in the moral history of contemporary humanity that one of the blackest pages in the annals of man has just closed, and yet the world knows next to nothing of the unspeakable horrors and infinite crimes perpetrated against the Jewish people.'

Dr. Hertz declared that 1,000,000 human beings had been butchered and that for three years 3,000,000 persons in the Ukraine had been made 'to pass through the horrors of hell' and that hardly a word of these facts had appeared in the newspapers.

The voice of the Jewish community, Dr. Hertz continued, had not been raised as it should have been, and it was humiliating to find the apathy and callousness with which certain sections of Jewry had faced this disaster. He described in detail some of the crimes that had been committed.

He said that although the pogroms in the Ukraine had ended there were something like 600,000 homeless children, 150,000 orphans and 35,000 double orphans in the Ukraine who would die from cold, hunger, or disease unless Jewish hearts remained human and came to the rescue."

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