The growing economic distress is leading to an alarming wave of suicides and baptisms among Polish Jewry. In Lodz there were to-day four cases of Jews committing suicide, because of starvation. They had had no food for days, it is stated.
People are collapsing in the streets of Warsaw for want of food. Several women who fainted to-day in the street, overcome by hunger, were taken to the hospital where they were brought back to life by being given food.
Many Jews are being driven by hunger into ### arms of the conversionists, says an appeal issued by the Sodiety for the Protection of the Jewish Faith, calling for organised effort to fight against the increasing activity of the missionary bodies. The crisis is being exploited by the missionaries who are at work in the Jewish towns, the appeal says, especially in Vilna, where they have opened seven mission houses. Thousands of impoverished Jews, waging a desperate fight against starvation and losing all hope of any improvement, are committing the terrible action of taking their own lives, while others are allowing themselves to be ensnared by the soul-snatchers. Something must be done, the appeal says, to put a stop to this growing epidemic of suicides and conversions.
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.
