The nearly five-hundred year old synagogue (built 486 years ago), in the township of Druja; in the Vilna district, is flooded to a depth of four metres. The Scrolls of the Law have been rescued with great difficulty, but the numerous Talmudic volumes stored there have been swept away.
The adjoining Beth Hamidrash, the Church, the marketplace, and a great number of houses are submerged. Many houses have been swept away by the floods.
1,657 people, including 450 children, have been evacuated from the town. The Government has made a grant of 1,000 zlotys towards the relief work there.
The City of Wilna has again been plunged into pitch darkness at night by the failure of the electrical station, which has been choked up by huge quantities of mud deposited by the flooded River Vilja.
The Jewish communities in the various places in the Vilna district are organising a separate Jewish Relief Committee.
A complaint that the Relief Committee for the Victims of the Vilna Floods set up under the chairmanship of the Governor of Vilna has only two Jews among its 70 members, no representative of any Jewish organisation, not even the Vilna Jewish Community, having been invited to join it, was made this week by the Polish-language daily “Nasz Przeglad” (reported in the J.T.A. Bulletin of April 30th.)
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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.
