tablished during the famine years following the World War, have now been opened throughout Poland to feed thousands of Jews. In Warsaw alone 60,000 Jews are being fed by such kitchens. Among those receiving their meals in breadlines and public kitchens are many intellectuals. In the provincial towns the situation is even worse than in Warsaw.
A tragic picture of hungry Jewish school children is painted by Dr. Kahn in his report. One third of the 160,000 boys and girls who attend Jewish schools in Poland, come to school hungry, since there is no food in their homes, Dr. Kahn discloses. The Joint Distribution Committee, which had given up its general relief work in Poland several years ago, and devoted its fund exclusively to reconstructive activities, found it imperative this year to undertake emergency feeding of the starving Jewish children of Poladn.
60% ARE JOBLESS
Sixty per cent of the 200,000 Jewish workers in Poland are unemployed and receive no unemployment insurance. Economic discrimination has reacted with great severity upon the white collar and professional class. There are practically no Jews among the State and Municipal officials. Accumulating restrictions stand to bar the Jews from liberal professions. Recent regulations also tend to exclude Jewish lawyers from the bar. The professional class comprises only three per cent of the entire Jewish population, but the majority of them has been reduced to a starvation level.
“The Polish authorities themselves are becoming alarmed over the fact that the economic ruin of the Jews may affect the whole country,” Dr. Kahn states in his report. “They are afraid chiefly because this ruin reacts most unfavorably upon the farmer. A Jewish town economically dead causes great misery to the surrounding villages,” Dr. Kahn concludes, expressing the hope that American Jewry will not leave the Polish Jews to their fate, and that efficient financial assistance will be provided in America to sustain the existence of Polish Jewry.
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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.
