“Yoohoooo,” called the lady in the foyer to the lady in the kitchen, “a reporter.”
“Yoohoooo,” called the lady in the kitchen to the lady in the foyer, “come on down.” And down, stepping carefully over unrolled rugs and unthumbed tacks, we went. Down to the basement of what was formerly the Walden School, where next month the women of the American Jewish Congress will replace little aspirants to culture with adult exponents of kultur. When the last rug and tack have been placed at 50 West Sixty-eighth street Congress House will open as a rendezvous for German refugees, proving the brilliance of an inspiration of Mrs. Stephen S. Wise.
In the gleaming kitchen Mrs. Jerome Michael, who is in charge of the proceedings in the absence of Mrs. Wise, sparred single handed with a gas-fitter, her dog Sherry and the Frigidaire Company bearing the gift of a colossal ice-box.
CATER TO SPECIAL TYPE
“We are catering to a rather special type of refugee,” she said between rounds. “The intellectuals, the ones who are really up against it, are handicapped by pride. Their work is much harder to find than that of an ordinary workman, and yet their sensitivities forbid them to accept charity. During the first period of adjustment when they have absolutely no place to go, they may stay here for a few days until some other arrangement has been made. We shall have a social worker in the house who will analyze their problems more personally than a philanthropic agency would, and a host and hostess, themselves refugees.”
Six large, well-appointed bedrooms attest to this welcome. Somewhere in Central Park there is an exiled Berlin musician anxiously awaiting the Ides of September when he will exchange his municipal boudoir for one of these. Other future occupants will be directed thither by the Congress agencies abroad, and a dock worker here at Quarantine.
Aside from the sleeping quarters there are to be a gay little tea room with equipment for those who want to flip their own pfannkuchen, a library music room, drawing room, garden restaurant and ubiquitous powder rooms where one may embellish her non-Aryan features unmolested. The function of the place will eventually be that of a salon. For even those who have already found sustenance on these shores are seeking a place where they will find those of their own ilk. The composer Arnold Schonberg has already cast a proprietary eye upon the new Sohmer that dominates the second floor.
RECEIVE MANY DONATIONS
Everyone, it appears, is touched by the cause. Department stores, merchants, and individuals have provided all the necessary furnishings. Even the taxi-driver who carts Mrs. Michael and Sherry to the house every morning has volunteered to do the minor trucking of the place. And the lady who lives next door, although reduced to the point of living in her own cellar, donated a magnificent wash-tub cover to the oppressed.
“And here on the top floor we have sky-lights, too,” said Mrs. Michael, “accommodations for every sort of artist, you see.”
“Yoohoooo,” floated up from the basement, “the Edison man.” And the reporter, unable to cope with the energy of these good women, fled with a parting yoohooo.
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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.
