The “Emergency Committee for Jewish Burial” called on Management and Labor, involved in the city’s gravediggers strike to return immediately to the bargaining table. “It is appalling,” said Rabbi Samuel Schrage, committee chairman, “that as the strike enters the 4th week, the parties are completely stalemated and no talks are scheduled.” The Emergency Committee which won a Court Order from Supreme Court Justice Harold Baer on January 16th, allowing for private citizens to dig graves for the purpose of burying Orthodox Jews, required by religious law to be buried within 24 hours from death, reports that 109 such burials took place. However, the freezing weather, is causing undue hardship on non-professional diggers who must use conventional tools to open the ice-packed grounds. The Committee reported that bodies by the hundreds are being storaged in cemetery warehouses “like excess baggage,” and that in addition to storing bodies in warehouses, cemeteries are placing sealed coffins on the cemetery grounds, covering them with canvas or a makeshift tent.
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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.
