During a pogrom in Kishineff a young man decided to devote his life to Israel’s needy and oppressed.
A youthful post-graduate student in Munich in 1903 heard the cry of oppressed Jewry in Russia and since then has given without stint or thought of recompense, except the happiness of his people, more than thirty years of his life.
Today Dr. Bernhard Kahn, European director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, director of the American Joint Reconstruction Foundation and leader in other aid movements, is here in New York to devise yet more ways of helping Jewry, both in Europe and in Palestine, in what may prove its darkest hour of need.
A GERMAN JEW
Although a native of Sweden, where his family had lived for a short time, Dr. Kahn, today, fifty-eight years old, is a German Jew, brought up in the highest traditions of German Jewry.
The massacre in Kishineff came as a shock to Dr. Kahn, at that time twenty-seven, and eagerly he joined the protest movement that swept the world. His earnest, convincing endeavor won the fancy of the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, central organization for German Jewry, and he was asked to join the group in its work. He accepted immediately.
That was in 1904. For eighteen years he gave his services as general secretary. He worked to bring order into the planless, haphazard immigration of East European Jews and to establish the wanderers on a solid economic basis. Together with Drs. Paul Nathan and James Simons, he is responsible for the organization and successful functioning of the Hilfsverein’s school system in the Near East, especially Palestine.
AIDED WAR VICTIMS
The Rumanian riots of 1907, the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, found Dr. Kahn in the midst of endeavors to succor innocent Jewry in those backward countries. He headed an international group that went to the relief of the war sufferers, which gave him a taste of what was yet to come in the holocaust that followed a year later.
The tallish, brown-eyed and gray-haired man, who looks ten years younger than his age, who holds the degree of Doctor of Law (he has attended several German universities), and is also an economist, explained patiently, with an earnest look in his eyes, about his work for his stricken brethren.
“Their situation was very tragic. Relief was essential to these innocent sufferers.”
Since the Hitler catastrophe, he has made his headquarters in Paris. The French government, he explained, was by no means unfriendly to German-Jewish refugees and shows great leniency toward them. The news that Paris had decided to forbid the extension of transit visas held by thousands of these refugees brought a quick protest to his lips.
CAN’T BELIEVE IT
“If it is true,” he said, “it is in absolute contrast with what Premier Flandin said to me a few days before I left for New York.
“Previously I had discussed the situation with Minister of Labor Jacquier. Their attitudes were not hostile—on the contrary . . .” and a look of deep thought passed his face.
“The situation of these refugees is tragic,” he continued, with a far-away look that showed his mind had swung back to the scenes of misery in France, “and even if a few of these people do get work, the vast majority suffers severely.”
The order, he explained, would be a general one and would not discriminate against the Jews as such. The several hundred thousand foreigners in France, Jew and Gentile alike, fall under the conditions imposed by the government.
But the World War witnessed him in his greatest endeavors. Jews by the million were caught in the conflicting currents of Allied and Central Powers.
HELPED CIVIL PRISONERS
His behind-the-lines duties were strenuous indeed. Civil prisoners in Germany have cause for gratitude for his work. With the American relief groups, chiefly the Joint Distribution Committee, he worked hand in hand. After the War, in 1920, he became chairman of the European executive of the Committee.
Headquarters during the war were in the neutral country of Holland. From there the long arm of the Committee reached into Germany, Poland, Russia, Rumania—wherever a Jew was in need.
“Since 1924,” he said, “when I took charge of all European activities of the Joint Distribution Committee, I have made many trips to Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia.”
CALLS ON U. S. JEWRY
Today’s catastrophe, almost as great as the one during the World War halocaust, find him energetically eager to further the JDC work in Europe.
“American Jews must give as much as possible,” he declared. “Without their aid our efforts would prove unavailing. Stricken Jewry in Europe demands it!”
He has the highest praise for Americans, he said. Their generosity has proved a boon to the European sufferers. But today’s situation demands every ounce of effort and endeavor, for their brethren across the seas call again.
Although the Joint Distribution Committee has expended $82,000,000 since its inception in 1914 for the aid of distressed Jewry in Europe, and $35,000,000 of this amount in the past thirteen years, Dr. Kahn warned that constructive relief measures on a larger scale than hitherto must be organized to cope with today’s situation, especially in Germany. And the situation of East European Jewry has become worse, he added.
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.
