The Jews in the Eastern War ZoneAmerican Jewish Committee
History
The Jews in the Eastern War Zone
American Jewish Committee
World War, 1914-1918 -- Jews
It is a boundless sea of troubles that has to be coped with and the
full weight of the task is falling upon Jewish shoulders. The gulf
dividing the bulk of Russian society from Jewish life and needs and
sorrows has not been bridged over by the horrors of war. Though now
and again a voice of sympathy is heard from Russian quarters, here
and there a Russian hand is extended to feed a starving Jewish child,
both moral and material assistance offered by non-Jews to our stricken
people is but infinitesimal as compared with the magnitude of the
distress.
Nor do we now wish to dwell specifically on Polish-Jewish relations,
it being too well known to what extent they have become pointed during
the recent months, bearing in their train infinite, yea, unbearable
sufferings for our Jewish brethren.
In order to unite the efforts of Jewish society towards the relief of
the Jewish sufferers from the war, at the very outbreak of the European
conflagration there was formed at Petrograd a General Jewish Relief
Committee, with the sanction of the Russian authorities, to act as a
center for the collection and distribution of funds to the destitute
and needy Jews. At the very beginning of its activity the General
Committee issued an appeal to the Jewish public calling it to its duty
to the unfortunate sufferers, just as the Jewish soldiers fighting and
distinguishing themselves in the ranks of the Russian army are doing
their duty by their mother country.
Jewish society at large has shown its usual responsiveness and material
support has been forthcoming in as large a measure as individual means
and circumstances would permit.
Committees, similar to the General Committee, working on the same lines
and in close unity with it have since been organized in prominent
centers of the stricken area and outside of it—e. g., in Warsaw,
Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and in addition the existing Jewish
organizations, such as the Central Committee of the Jewish Colonization
Association, the Society for the Promotion of Education in Russia,
the Jewish Health Society, the Society for the Promotion of Trade and
Industry among Russian Jews, etc., etc., are taking active part in the
relief work. Representatives of the various committees and societies
working in the war zone and outside it meet periodically in order to
discuss new measures and schemes for the alleviation of the terrible
distress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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