Pittsburgh Paper Sees JTA Fulfilling “important Mission”

The American Jewish Outlook, local weekly, devotes its leading editorial to discussing the function of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The editorial, which appears in the Passover issue, follows:

“Conservative estimates place the number of Jews murdered in the Ukraine in the pogroms following the last World War at 60,000. Approximately the same figure is given for the wounded. About 50,000 Jewish women were widowed and more than 100,000 children orphaned.

“What did the outside world know about this huge massacre? What did American Jewry know about it? How many months passed before the world abroad had even an inkling of the fact that almost 500,000 Jews abandoned their homes to flee to safety from the bands of Petlura and White Guard pogromists? Russian Jewry was isolated from the rest of the world, abandoned, with no one even attempting to establish the slightest contact with them.

“Would pogroms of this magnitude be possible today, even in the time of Hitler? Would it be possible to massacre thousands of Jews in any country in Europe with months passing before the world was informed about it?

“The recent pogrom in Rumania, and the mass slaughter of Jews by the Nazis in occupied Poland last year prove that although the history of the last war is now repeating itself, Jewish pogroms are immediately brought to the attention of the civilized world, no matter how isolated the country where they occur nor how severe the censorship may be there.

“There was no Jewish news agency during the last World War to keep a watchful eye on what was happening to the Jews in war-stricken countries and to report it to the world. There is one now, however. Had there been a Jewish Telegraphic Agency at the time of the pogroms in the Ukraine, the Jewish massacres there would certainly have not assumed such huge proportions as they did. They would have been checked by public protests from abroad, as were the recent pogroms in Rumania, when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was the first to shock the world with the horrible details of how Jews in Bucharest were led to the municipal slaughter houses for kosher slaughtering.

“The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has, since its existence, been performing an important task not only in gathering and reporting Jewish news, but also in the preventative value of some of its news. In keeping an eye on Jewish life in all parts of the world, the JTA not only served as a link connecting Jewish communities throughout the world with each other, but also as an instrument with which anti-Semitic governments had to reckon.

“News disseminated by the JTA is published not only in the Jewish press, but also in the general press. It is read by diplomats and prominent personalities all over the world. It is, therefore, no longer possible now for tens of thousands of Jews to be killed without the world’s becoming unaware of it, as was the case in the last World War when there was no JTA.

“In the present war the JTA performs a particularly valuable service by keeping the world informed of practically every move the Nazi administration makes in Poland, where millions of Jews are suffering under the Nazi yoke. Though no correspondent is permitted into Nazi-held territory, the JTA maintains a service which manages to secure every detail of Jewish life in the ghettoes in Poland and bring it to the outside Jewish and non-Jewish world, thus breaking through the veil of secrecy with which the Nazi seek to shroud Poland from the rest of the world. The same is true with regard to the Jewish developments in the Reich.

“That the work of the JTA is appreciated not only by the newspapers which subscribe to its service, but also by Jewish leaders throughout the world has been emphasized in many statements issued by these leaders. The late Louis Marshall once wrote: If there were no JTA, we would have to establish one.

“This is especially true today when the world is tern apart, and when Jews as never before need a connecting link. This is particularly true today when Hitler is conducting his merciless war against the Jews of the world and when the Jews, having no army, navy or air fleet of their own, can only fight Hitler with words and proper information.

“The United Jewish Fund of Pittsburgh is one of the Jewish institutions in the United States which is supporting the JTA. The Jewish Outlook is the publication in Pittsburgh which serves its readers with JTA news and is proud of it. The JTA had been performing an important task even before the war broke out. In the present time of war the mission of the JTA is even more important. It is important for the Jews on this side of the ocean as well as for our unfortunate brethren on the other side whose trials and tribulations the JTA is now bringing daily and accurately to the attention of the civilized world.”