About 45,000 Jewish children in Poland who attend the schools of the two Jewish educational organisations, the Hebrew Tarbuth Organisation and the Yiddish School Organisation, Zisho, may be left without schooling in the new school year, which is opening now, because both organisations have no funds with which to continue their work.
The two organisations both invited Press representatives to-day to separate press gatherings arranged to explain to them now desperate their situation is, so that they should make the facts known to Jewish public opinion, in the hope that it may still be possible to save the Jewish schools in Poland.
The teachers have not received salaries for months, it was stated. The subsidies granted by the foreign Jewish organisations, especially by the Joint Distribution Committee, have been reduced. The Polish Municipalities, which have been giving subsidies to the Jewish schools, have now removed them from their budgets, because of their own financial difficulties, and a large number of Jewish schools are in danger of being evicted from their school buildings, because they have not been able to pay their rent. The Yiddishist schools, it was added, are suffering in addition because of the hostility of the Government authorities, who are placing administrative impediments in the way of their work. There is no hope now of the Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary in Vilna being reopened.
The Yiddishist schools are starting a campaign both in Poland and abroad, with a view to raising some funds to enable them to continue to carry on their work, and the Hebrew Tarbuth schools are awaiting the arrival in Poland of the famous Hebrew poet, Mr. Ch. N. Bialik, who is expected here in October, in order to head the campaign on their behalf.
On account of the lack of funds, it was further pointed out, it will not be possible to provide meals, as hitherto, for the children attending the schools of the two Jewish educational organisations, and with the winter expected to be more than usually severe this year, this would be particularly disastrous to the future of the younger generation of Polish Jewry.
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