The post-war task of reconstructing Jewish lives and homes now blasted by the forces of Fascism will be one unequalled in the history of any people, Mr. Joseph C. Hyman, executive vice-chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, told the Community Forum on Jewish Affairs, meeting at the Jewish Community Center here last night. American Jews, through their organizations of relief and rehabilitation, he said, will play a major role in that reconstruction.
“In this enormous task the agencies of emergency aid, of reconstruction, of mercy and humanity, will play a greater role than even today,” Mr. Hyman declared. “The Joint Distribution committee, the United Palestine Appeal, and the National Refugee Service will be called upon in larger measure than ever before to serve as the channels of American Jewish good-will and as the articulate expression of American Jewish self-respect. They and the British community and the other Jewish communities of our Allies will need to collaborate fully in the far-flung fields of our common service.”
Declaring that the problem of the future will be to save whatever spark of civilization that still smoulders among the ashes of Europe, both for the reestablishment of Jewish life and for the betterment of all humanity, Mr. Hyman pointed out that a three-fold task faces the Jews of America today. “First, in the midst of war and battle,” he said, “we must labor with all our skill and knowledge and resource to save all who can be saved; second, to work out broad-based plans for a new society in which Jewish life and the lives of all groups may be put upon the firm foundation of security and equality before the law; and, third, to do our full job as Americans concerned with the fate and destiny of our country and the hopes we share with our fellow citizens-Catholic and Protestant-that this nation may continue in world-leadership in the shaping of the peace as fully and generously as it has taken on the enormous responsibilities of the fighting of the war.”
Looking beyond these immediate concerns, Mr. Hymen outlined some of the practical requirements of the years after the war. “Then, as now, we shall have little time for tears,” he said. “There will be too much to do to feed those who have been famished for years; to find parents and homes for children; to reunits husband and wife and parent and child; to rebuild broken homes and broken bodies; to heal the physical wounds and the infinitely more difficult mental and spiritual scars that have mutilated not only adults but innocent children. We shall have the Herculean task of restoring the Jewish institutions of self-help; the Jewish organizations of economic aid and self support. We shall have the problem of retraining and of reorganizing the structure of Jewish life in many parts of the world. We shall have to set into a sound pattern of European economy the Jews who will have come back from the concentration camps and internment centers, from the front lines of the battle fields, and from a hundred and one hiding places and from scattered areas into which they have been driven by the Nazi tyrants.”
Although many victims of the inhuman terror will find great difficulty in resuming normal parterns of existence, he pointed out, their will to survive remains unbroken. Mr. Hyman called upon the Jewish community to heal its internal divisions so that it might present a stronger front to the enemy and make possible more effective aid to its victims.
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