Appeal for Continuation Reconstruction Work of “ort” Issue

6,000 Jewish young men are receiving professional and educational instruction in 120 schools in Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Lat via and Roumania; and 16,000 families of Jewish artisans and farmers have been helped, not with charity, but with credit, tools and advice, in the course of the last few years, by the “Ort,” the Jewish association for the promotion of trades and agriculture among the Jewish people.

These facts are stated in an appeal issued today by Dr. Leon Bramson and Dr. A. Singalovsky, the American representatives of the “Ort.”

The “Ort” which was founded in Russia in 1880 for the purpose of introducing productive trades among the Jewish people of Eastern Europe, has continued its work since then, without interruption even during the World War and the social and political revolutions. This society, which embraces 53 organizations of Eastern European Jews, is engaged in an endeavor to cure the evil of Jewish life-poverty, unemployment, starvation.

While collecting considerable sums of money in Europe, the continuation of the work requires the generous support also of American Jewry. This support has, up till now, been given

through the medium of the Joint Distribution Committee and the ##. The Joint Distribution Committee has however, stopped its subsidies for relief and reconstruction work; and since the work carried on up till now in Eastern Europe must be continued, the Ort delegation has addressed itself directly not only to the 150 organizations which were connected with the ## Ort, but to the entire American Jewish public.

“Never before was the task of the “Ort”-the reconstruction work in Eastern Europe-so urgent as it is today,” the appeal reads.

“If before the war, the Jewish small traders had any kind of an economic basis, the changes caused by the war and the political and social revolutions have completely destroyed it. After the destruction of the war itself, came the political and social upheavals. The installation of a new economic order on the one hand and the growth of anti-Semitism and the organization of the local population against the Jewish traders on the other hand-a whole series of catastrophic events-threw the Jews out of their previous economic activity and forced them to look for means of livelihood in the shops, fields and factories.

“The Jewish masses are therefore turning more and more to productive labor, and even if the fathers are not always in a position to change their method of earning a living and adopt themselves to the new conditions, they are, however, anxious to fit their children to be prepared for the new economic order. The younger generation, by the tens of thousands, are looking for schools and means whereby to learn a trade, a profession, or facilities whereby to engage in agriculture.”