Saloniki Jews Appeal to J. D. C. on Behalf of 400 Suffering Families

An appeal of the leaders of the Jewish community in Saloniki on behalf of four hundred Jewish families, was presented at the last meeting of the Joint Distribution Committee held last week.

The appeal, which was forwarded by Dr. Bernard Kahn, asked for the allottment of $100,000 for the purpose of aiding these families who live in the congested quarter of Saloniki. The Aktche-Mesdjid districts, where about 900 Jewish families, victims of the fire of 1917, live, is about to be razed. Five hundred of the families are able to care for themselves, the rest are threatened with evacuation into the streets. The community asks for the fund in order to build 200 houses.

The commitments already made by the Joint Distribution Committee in Eastern Europe preclude its granting of more than a modest sum in response to the Saloniki appeal.

David A. Brown issued an appeal to Saloniki Jews now resident in other parts of the world for additional aid. Jews of Saloniki, which was a center of Jewish life in the Levant, have migrated in large numbers since the war to the United States, France, Italy, Holland, England, and the Latin American countries. These former Salonikians are urged in Mr. Brown’s appeal to contribute the additional means needed for the relief of their former fellow-townsmen.

“Hundreds of thousands of dollars are estimated to be needed for the restoration of these shattered and outcast families who cling to a pitiable shred of existence as refugees of war, fire and pestilence in their own city,” Mr. Brown declared in his message. “The building of homes for these people, the provision of minimum sanitary and medical care, and of immediate economic aid for putting them on their feet as workers, means practically the building of an entire city quarter, and the reconditioning of a whole community life. The sums at the disposal of the J. D. C. can supply only a small measure of what is required. We urge those former Salonikians, now in more fortunate circumstances in other countries of the world, for the sake of the historic prestige of their community, and the once proud and prosperous Jewish life it maintained for so many generations, for the sake of human fellow-feeling, to do what they can for the suffering men, women, and children of the city of their own birth. Remittances my be sent directly to the authorized heads of the Saloniki Jewish community, or to the Joint Distribution Committee, to be disbursed through its officers for this purpose.”