Mendel Mozes, for twenty years head of the JTA office in Warsaw, arrived in New York yesterday with his family after having escaped from Nazi-held Poland. Emigrating from Lithuania, Mozes came by way of Soviet Russia and Japan.
“I am happy to be now on American soil,” Mozes said. “It feels good to be in a country where no Nazi hand can reach you.”
Mozes who witnessed the flight of tens of thousands of Jews from Poland, emphasized that starvation prevailed among the Jews under the occupation. Mere bread is a luxury to at least half of the two million Polish Jews who fell under Nazi administration, he declared.
As to the Jews under Soviet occupation, Mozes confirmed the reports that thousands of them were being transported to the most distant parts of Siberia. “Wives are being mercilessly separated from their husbands and children from their parents, and this punishment is being meted out to them only for their ‘crime’ of seeking safey from Nazism by escaping into Soviet-held territory,” Moses declared.
The only hope for European Jewry today is the aid that can come for them from America, Mozes said. Though suffering physically, Polish Jewry is not morally broken, he added.
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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.