In an open letter to the Professor Franklin S. Harris, head of the American ICOR Commission to Bira Bidjan, Dr. N. Gergel, a leader of the Oze, the society for safe-guarding the health of the Jews of Eastern Europe, takes Dr. Harris and his fellow commissioners to task for their failure to make any mention in their report of the bad management, lack of planning and other charges levied against the Ozet’s management of Bira Bidjan. In view of the recent decision of the Soviet government to make of Bira Bidjan an independent administrative unit and not, as had been originally planned, a Jewish Republic, Dr. Gergel’s letter is timely.
The letter follows:
Dear Prof. Harris:
When your commission was in Berlin on its way to Russia it called a conference of Jewish communal workers, to which I had the honor to be invited. At this conference, which considered the problems in connection with the intended investigation of Biro-Bidjan, I was firmly convinced that you would conduct your work in an absolutely impartial manner and that you would afterwards present your impressions to the Jewish public with the same impartiality. Thanks to the confidence which your commission inspired during this conferer#e, I take the liberty of addressing the following letter to you.
In the report of the experts’ commission you give only a brief consideration to the beginning of the Jewish colonization in Biro-Bidjan and present almost no data with regard to the condition of the Jewish immigrants who settled there during 1928 and 1929. The Jewish public however is very much interested to learn the situation of these pioneers who made the greatest sacrifices to build up the country and is eager to acquaint itself with the work which has been done in Biro-Bidjan during the first one and a half years. But its interest is even increased when reports come in from Biro-Bidjan describing the situation of the Jewish immigrants there as the worst possible. These reports do not come from opponents of Jewish colonization in Biro-Bidjan, but from devoted friends, who regarded it their duty to warn of the danger which threatens the pioneer Jewish settlement in Biro-Bidjan.
ALARMING INFORMATION
Especially alarming information {SPAN}###{/SPAN} brought by the well-known Soviet journalist, W. Fink, who was in Biro-Bidjan together with your commission. In the magazine “Sovetskoye Stroitelstvo” of May 1930, Mr. Fink states that lack of planning, lack of preparation and bad management have brought very unfortunate results and have placed the immigrants in a terrible situation. Mr. Fink writes that “in surroundings of exceptional congestion and dirt there are living together in two-story hovels people who are totally strange to each other—young men, girls, old men, families with several babies” and “that barracks which have been erected to house these immigrants in Biro-Bidjan would be a disgrace even for a jail.” In these barracks one is supposed to remain only three days, but in reality one remains there two or three months. Living under such inhuman conditions, the immigrants are eating up the credits which they get for the purpose of building up their farm property. Many of them become beggars. In his article Mr. Fink says distinctly that “many spend their credits, others seek occasional work, others become manual laborers, open restaurants or trade surreptitiously with whatever comes to hand.” Many return home or go to Sakhalin. Part of them have settled in twelve communities, which have been created by “helpless groups in the God-forsaken Taiga and in the marshes.” Especially tragic is the situation of the lonely women. “Against their will they begin to traffic in prostitution! Some women go for this purpose to Khabarovsk, but in Tikhonkoe too several Jewish women have during September-October 1929 begun to occupy themselves with prostitution.”
GRAVE ACCUSATIONS
These and other grave accusations against the “Ozet” management are made by a responsible Soviet journalist in a Soviet journal which appears in Moscow, but in the report of your commission we find no facts about this catastrophic situation. To be sure your report points out that “some of the first immigrants, unfit to bear the hardships of pioneer conditions, couldn’t stand them and returned home, spreading false information and a panic with regard to Biro-Bidjan.” The words “false information and panic” sound like an accusation against the unhappy Jewish
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
