There is no doubt that we are in a deep financial depression, hoping to have reached the lowest point, and it goes without saying that all of us are overwhelmed with appeals for unemployed in every field, Mr. Felix M. Warburg, since its foundation in 1914, Chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, and now Honorary Chairman, said at a gathering of leading Jews in Buffalo, which he addressed at the Hotel Statler yesterday, urging them to continue to raise funds for the relief of the Jewish populations abroad. But in comparison to the difficulties which the people abroad have, he claimed, ours are more easy to carry.
In Poland, where we have done an extraordinary piece of work, Mr. Warburg explained, our investments are at stake, because here and there strengthening of many free loan societies and co-operatives may be needed so as to bring out the local capital which has joined us to an ever increasing degree.
You who live in a neighbourhood of most solid businessmen, he said, know how difficult and easily evaporating capital is. If an institution is deserted by its former backers, the later friends are apt to desert it also, and this catastrophe anc calamity would happen to thousands of the shareholders and subscribers.
Speaking of the conditions of the Jews in Germany, Mr. Warburg said that life has been made miserable by the antisemitic outbreaks which embitter their lives. Of course, it is nothing new that whenever misfortune strikes a country, scapegoats are found and , as a rule, it has been the Jews who have been held responsible for these misfortunes. Those of us who can look back forty years or so can recite to our so-called consolation that the present outbreak of the unfortunate German unemployed people under Hitler is just another instance when the Jews are to be blamed for every misfortune.
These things show, Mr. Warburg warned his hearers, that in that country, where the Jews have been the contributing philanthropists to help other countries, they are now not in a position even to provide for themselves and, instead of being aggressive in philanthropy, they are now defendants against ruthless accusations.
Can we leave the people abroad to struggle alone Mr. Warburg asked, because we have difficulties at home?
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.
