Jewish Institutions Overseas in Danger of Closing Due to Economic Plight; 120,000 Bukowinan Jews Fac

Reports are appearing in the Jewish daily newspapers of various East-European countries, of public institutions in such financial straits that, in many communities, serious thought is being given to proposals to close them down. This situation, the newspaper reports show, is due to the steady decline of their local resources, because of the extreme economic depression in those countries, which is having a disastrous effect on the Jewish populations.

One of the gravest reports relates the present financial status of the Jewish Child Welfare Federation of Poland, the directors of which recently held a special meeting to consider a proposal that its operations be suspended. One of the reasons given at the meeting for raising this question was that the decreased subsidy of the Federation by the Joint Distribution Committee has imposed a financial burden upon them, which, at the present time, the Jews of Poland are unable to carry. As a consequence, the orphan asylums and other child-care institutions under the jurisdiction of the Child-Welfare Federation, are all face-to-face with large deficits. Citing the situation in three cities as typical of the situation throughout Poland, the newspaper reports that the deficit of the orphanages in Bialystok is 71,517.31 zlotas; in Grodno, 28,902.96 zlotas; in Lomza, 22,365.07 zlotas. Other Jewish communal institutions in the three cities named, the newspaper reports say, have similarly large deficits.

NO GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES

The newspaper reports point out that institutions ministering to the general population of East European countries, receive generous subsidies from the governments. This, broadly speaking, is not the case with Jewish institutions. Such subsidies as are granted to certain types of Jewish institutions by some of the governments, are so small as to make no appreciable impression on their financial condition.

BUKOWINA JEWS FACE RUIN

In addition to the reports in the Jewish daily press of Europe, the Allied Jewish Campaign is in receipt of numerous cables from numerous East European communities, giving details of the increasing gravity of the Jewish situation overseas. One of these cables is from Carl Kleuger, regarded as one of the leading Jews of Bukowina, to the effect that 120,000 Jews in that province of Roumania, “already reduced to pauperism,” are threatened with “catastrophal ruin and disaster.”

Mr. Kleuger was the chairman of an all-Jewish economic conference held at Cernauti recently, to take steps to prevent disaster from overwhelming the Jews of Bukowina. The conference was attended by representatives of all the Jewish communal, social and professional organizations, artisans’ and farmers’ groups, and delegates elected by all the Jewish communities in the province. According to Mr. Kleuger’s cable, reports made to the conference, revealed the fact that all of the Jewish social and cultural institutions in the land were in an “unfortunate and catastrophal situation,” and that the number of Jewish unemployed, both in the towns and on the farms, had reached dangerous proportions.

Plans were made for the opening of middle class loan banks to assist the Jewish merchants and traders, and free loan banks for the benefit of farmers and laborers. “The Bukowina Jewish economic conference has taken every step that is possible within its own resources to relieve the situation,” Mr. Kleuger cabled, “but finds it necessary to appeal to their brethren in America on behalf of Jews of this country who are totally distressed and reduced to pauperism, and to prevent the catastrophal ruin and disaster of 120,000 Jewish settlers.”

In making the facts public, David M. Bressler, one of the national co-chairmen of the Allied Jewish Campaign, stated that, like the Jewish press of Europe, he was pointing to these cases cited as typical of the entire situation overseas. “The same situation, exactly, prevails in other parts of Roumania, and in other East European countries as well,” he declared. “In Lithuania, in Latvia, in Transylvania, in Old Roumania—everywhere—Jewish institutions, groaning under deficits which it is utterly impossible for the local populations to meet, due to their terrible poverty, are threatened with closing down.”