Frustration, Despair Still Pervade Area B’nai B’rith Starts $500,000 Relief Effort for Flood-hit Eas

B’nai B’rith officials announced today the start of a $500,000 disaster relief campaign to help rehabilitate food damaged Jewish institutions and “assist in other human needs” in Jewish communities devastated by hurricane Agnes in June. The emergency action, ratified by the B’nai B’rith board of governors, included sending a former government relief specialist to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, one of the hardest-hit areas, to “help cut through bureaucratic delay” for stricken residents, all considered unfamiliar with government procedures in applying for federal and state assistance.

Officials described the B’nai B’rith effort as a supplement to relief campaigns inaugurated by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds and other national Jewish agencies. Solomon Rosenbaum of Fitchburg, Mass., who heads the B’nai B’rith drive, said the funds will be directed principally to the Wyoming Valley region in Pennsylvania-which takes in Wilkes-Barre and Harrisburg-and Elmira, N.Y., areas whose Jewish communities were hit hardest by the hurricane. Rosenbaum said allocations would be “coordinated with the relief programs of federations and other Jewish groups.”

B’nai B’rith named W. Bryan Shoemaker, former deputy director for disaster operations in the federal Small Business Administration, to help expedite individual applications for government assistance. Shoemaker, who will have headquarters in an office in Wilkes-Barre’s damaged Jewish community center, starting on Monday, “has been assigned for at least six weeks and his door is open to non-Jews as well” as Jews, Rosenbaum added.

David M. Blumberg, B’nai B’rith president, urged the emergency campaign after an inspection tour of Wilkes-Barre and neighboring Kingston, a suburban community which had housed some 60 percent of the Wyoming Valley’s 1600 Jewish families. He described the ruin caused by a rampaging Susquehanna River as “the worst I have ever seen, as saddening and shocking as any bombed out area I saw during World War II.” Blumberg also said that “every single member” of B’nai B’rith in the area had suffered severe losses in the flood. He added that “the lucky ones had their homes flooded and much of their possessions ruined. The unlucky ones had their homes or businesses–sometimes both–completely demolished.”

URGENT APPEAL TO MEMBERSHIP

Rosenbaum said the $500,000 campaign would be conducted “as an urgent appeal to our own membership during a single intensive week in September.” The appeal will be made through B’nai B’rith lodges and B’nai B’rith women’s chapters, with the latter effort headed by Mrs. Arthur Rosenbluth, a former B’nai B’rith women’s president. He said the B’nai B’rith opened the campaign with an $10,000 allocation, Personal contributions by board members added almost $10,000 more. The B’nai B’rith Youth Organization contributed $1000, he said. Some 5000 BBYO teenagers, many of them participating in a leadership training institute at Camp B’nai B’rith in Starlight, Pa., have been traveling to the Wyoming Valley area regularly to help remove mud and debris from scores of homes in the area.

Perry Shertz, a Wilkes-Barre attorney and former president of B’nai B’rith district three, said a mood of frustration and despair still pervades among many of the 1200 Jewish families in the Wyoming Valley whose homes were damaged or destroyed. He said only some 200 Jewish families have been able to return to their homes. He reported that 1000 other Jewish families were “still dislocated,” living in trailers or motels, or with relatives or friends in surrounding communities and elsewhere.”

He also reported that a number of despondent persons who had “lost almost everything” had attempted suicide and that 150 Jewish families “are dispirited to the point where they have decided to leave the area, although we are trying to persuade them to stay.” He said the Kingston community felt the full fury of the storm. He said all but 20 of its 6600 homes were damaged. He said he feared for the future viability of the area without some forms of direct federal grants to flood victims.

Officials said Jewish institutions which suffered excessive damage included three synagogues, the Jewish community center and a day school in the Wilkes-Barre-Kingston area, and Jewish community centers in Harrisburg and Elmira. Total damages to the seven institutions have been estimated at $2 million, officials said.

SCA GROUP VISITS AREA, PRESENTS $15,000 CHECK

The Synagogue Council of America said in New York it had sent an official delegation to Wilkes-Barre last Thursday, to meet with rabbis and community leaders and to tour the stricken area to inspect damages to Jewish institutions. Rabbi Judah Nadich of New York, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, said he hoped the visit of the SCA delegation would help strengthen the determination of the Wilkes-Barre Jewish community to rebuild its communal life.

Rabbi Henry Siegman, SCA executive vice-president, presented the Wilkes-Barre religious leaders with a check for $15,000, to be used “for the rebuilding of the community” and to supplement financial aid being sent by individual constituent organizations of the SCA to the synagogues and other institutions in the area. Other members of the delegation were Rabbi Louis Bernstein, president of the (Orthodox) Rabbinical Council of America, and Rabbi Joseph Glaser, executive vice-president of the (Reform) Central Conference of American Rabbis.