About 70,000 Jewish children are estimated to have been left without schooling in Poland in the new school year which was opened to-day, because the Jewish Communities have found it impossible, owing to lack of funds, to open many of the school classes.
It is the poorer Jewish children who are mostly affected, and on account of the economic crisis, these children are suffering terrible hardship because they cannot go to school. The atmosphere in their homes is one of indescribable misery and desperation. The parents are unable to provide them with food or clothing, and many of them are running wild. The schools used to provide the children with meals and with clothes, and to-day, crowds of Jewish parents, anxious to obtain these opportunities for their children by getting them admitted to those few classes which have been reopened, besieged the Jewish Community schools in Warsaw, creating riots in some cases, and one of the schools was badly damaged in the crush. The Warsaw Jewish Community had announced that only a few of the classes would be reopened, and that therefore only a few children could be enrolled, but great crowds of Jews, nevertheless, came with their children in the hope of obtaining admission for them.
About 45,000 Jewish children in Poland who attend the schools of the two Jewish educational organisation, the Hebrew Tarbuth Organisation and the Yiddish School Organisation, Zisho, may also be left without schooling in the new school year, in addition to those who have attending the Jewish Community schools, it was announced last week, because both organisations have no funds with which to continue their work. 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.
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