Celia Razovsky Works Quietly to Aid Immigrant and Needy

Imagine a little girl growing up in one of the poorest sections of a great industrial city, looking from earliest childhood on the sordidness, the misery, often the despair of slum homes, observing how the sick—if they are poor— lack care, how youth—if it is poor —lacks joy, how men grow bitter and women old under the terrible pressure of constant need and want. What is to become of such a little girl?

If the fates are kind, and give her a brilliant mind, a warm and sympathetic heart, a great talent for leadership and a character of unusual strength, she will grow into a Cecilia Razovsky. For this was the early environment, these were the childhood impressions of Miss Razovsky (Mrs. Davidson in private life), and out of them grew her desire to work for the present alleviation and the future betterment of social conditions.

Fortunately, her own family, though poor in worldly goods, was rich in ideals, and made it possible for her to graduate from the School of Social Science in St. Louis, where she was born. Then came years of settlement work in Chicago and in 1920 she joined the National Council of Jewish Women. For that body she is doing work not only of national but of international importance.

When after the war, the map of Europe was rearranged and all countries changed their immigration laws, there was a constant stream of refugees coming either to America or to countries nearby who were untutored, uprooted and helpless. They would have perished had not organized charity taken their problem in hand. Miss Razovsky made it her special work to take charge of those immigrants and refugees and she is now an acknowledged leader in all activities of this type.

HEADED EXPERTS’ BODY

When Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, created the Ellis Island Committee of Lay People to study the economic and human problems of deportation a committee of experts was named to put their technical and legislative knowledge and their practical experience at the service of the Committee. Miss Razovsky was the chairman of this committee of experts, and no wonder that now, when refugees and emigrants, coming from Germany, have to be taken care of, the Council of Jewish Women had to lend her to the National Coordinating Committee as its executive director.

Of her “Work in Progress” Miss Razovsky prefers not to talk; its problems are too immediate to be discussed at present, but she speaks with much animation and delightful humor of all that the Council and Hias, through her, accomplished in Cuba in 1924.

“In Cuba,” she declared, “there were about 5,000 refugees—Jews, not knowing the language, without means of support — simply stranded. They had come there, poor, misguided people, through the stupidity of the ship-agents in Europe, who explained to them that Cuba is near America and that—as soon as the quota-law would permit their entry—they could in a few hours be in this land of hope and promise.

“Of course, we could not simply let these people starve and die of neglect. Something had to be done and it was done. We went out and found work for them.”