Criminal Negligence Alleged by Jewish Communist Organ in Moscow Against Jewish Trans-settlement Work

A grave crisis in the Jewish trans-settlement movement to the Crimea is indicated in a series of charges against the manner in which the work is being carried on which are made to-day in the Jewish Communist organ “Emess”. A telegram from Eupatoria, in the Crimea, which is printed in the “Emess” states that a hundred transmigrants to the Crimea have already been sent back to their native towns in White Russia and the Ukraine, because they were found to be consumptive, ruptured, or otherwise ill and unfit for agricultural colonisation. The telegram from Eupatoria protests against the slackness in which the selection work is carried on, resulting in sick people being sent out, wasting money on railway fares both ways.

The “Emess” goes on to make a violent attack upon the officials of the Government Commission for Jewish Land Settlement (Comzet) both in Moscow and in the Crimea. It accuses the Eupatoria Comzet and other officials of criminal negligence and of failing to make proper preparations for receiving the transmigrants. The weary, helpless wanderers on reaching their destination have found no sleeping places, the “Emess” says, and have had to sleep for two nights in the railway stations. Gross mismanagement and corruption is alleged by the “Emess”. Tinned food sent for the transmigrants, it says, has not reached its destination and the local population of Djelal in the Jewish region of Freidorf illegally took possession of a quantity of dried fish which was sent for the new arrivals. The “Emess” gives the names of collectives in the Freidorf, region, which, it says, refused to accept emigrants who were assigned to them, offering instead to transport them back to the trains to return to their home-towns. The Soviet at Tageili, in the Freidorf region, is also stated to have received a group of girl emigrants with an “antisemitic welcome”, and it demands an investigation against this Soviet. Because of the wholesale mismanagement of the transmigration campaign, the unpreparedness and the unfriendliness shown to the newcomers, it is not surprising, the “Emess” says, that they beg to be sent back to their old homes in the ghetto.