A five-month campaign to double membership of the National Council of Jewish Women in order to meet increased relief demands among German refugees in the United States and elsewhere was announced yesterday by Mrs. Arthur Brin, president. The largest Jewish women’s group in the world, it has 40,000 members and 200 active chapters throughout the country.
The campaign will be formally opened November 1 by each of the 200 sections and will continue till the triennial convention of the council in New Orleans next March. It will be conducted under the leadership of Mrs. J. L. Langsdorf of Elkins Park, Pa., chairman of the national membership and finance committee, assisted by Mrs. A. H. Arons of New York.
MRS. KOHUT ON AIR
A first shot in the campaign in the New York area was fired last night by Mrs. Rebekah Kohut, president of the World Organization of Jewish Women, and an honorary vice-president and a founder of the National Council, in a radio address over Station WEVD.
In announcing the campaign the Council’s president, Mrs. Brin, stated that in its forty-one years of existence, the council has never been beset by as many problems and calls for its services.
“The situation,” she said, “is especially grave in regard to German refugees, children even more than adults. In the long history of the Jews that is marked by other periods of persecution which has disfigured civilization, none is more horrifying than this one in Germany. I think we can best realize the tragedy when we think of it in terms of little children. I have heard eye-witnesses tell of the suffering of the children who are bewildered and crushed by the insults and humiliations inflicted upon them.
HUNDREDS LEAVE REICH
“It is to avoid this crushing of the souls of their children that many parents who despair of leaving the country themselves are making a desperate effort to send their children out of Germany. Hundreds of children have already been sent, many of them unaccompanied, to England, Palestine, France, Holland, Switzerland. They are the victims of hate and the Council considers it its solemn duty to participate in their rehabilitation and the duty of every Jewish woman in America to join the work of our organization. To carry on its work the council not only needs funds but the support and services which only a large and active membership can give.”
In her radio address launching the New York appeal, Mrs. Kohut described the membership drive of the Council as a “challenge.”
“The Jewish woman must choose,” she said, “between a disorganized, chaotic and insecure world and a world in which there is peace, plenty, freedom and security.”
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.
