250,000 Polish Jews in USSR Expect to Return to Poland, Appeal to U.S. Jews for Aid

Emphasizing that there are 250,000 Polish Jews “tomperarily residing” in Russia, the presidium of the Committee of Polish Jews in the USSR today issued an appeal to the Jews of America, Palestine, Britain and other countries asking for “immediate material holp.” The appeal points out that the Jewish refugees in the Soviet Union are “the core of the future Jewish community in Poland.”

“The Nazi crusade against the Jewish population of Poland forced Polish Jews to leave their country,” the appeal says. “To save their lives they left behind them all their worldly goods and property and fled in panio toward the cast. In this manner some 250,000 Polish Jews escaped from the brutal Nazi terrow to find asylum in the Soviet Union.

“Fully aware of their responsibilities they set themselves immediately to work in verious industrial and economic fields joining with the local Soviet population in forging effective weapons against the rapacious German fascism. However, the arduous wartime comditions as well as the numerous evacuations from various districts imposed a servere strain upon their health, material resources and clothes.

“In view of the historically unprececented crime committed in the extermination of the great Jewish community in Poland by the bloody hand of German fascism it is obvious that the Jewish refugees in the Soviet Union, owing to their numbers and their quality, will constitute the core of the future Jewish community in Poland. A Majority of the refugees are skilled professionals – physicians, engineers, lawyers, intellectuals, teachers, clerks, artisans, merchants, prominent literary men and social leaders, Many are workers from the heavy industries.

“Therefore, from every point of view, it is of the utmost importance that everything possible should be done to protect the life and health of these Jewish refugees that they might one day return to Poland in comparatively sound physical condition. This is even more important since the Polish Jews in the emigration have always expressed and are now expressing their unswerving will to return to their Motherland – a revived democratic Poland.

“During this hardest period of their history the Polish Jews turn their eyes toward their brothers abroad with when they are linked by blood. Irrespective of the aid rendered to our unhappy brothers who have survived in Poland and who waged a commen struggld against the brutal Nazi invader it is of the most urgent importance that immediate material help should be given to the Jewish refugees in the Soviet Union from whom the future Jewish community in Poland is destined to be recreated.

“On behalf of the quarter million Polish Jews temporarily residing in the Soviet Union and represented by the Organizational Committee of Polish Jews let us appeal to the feelings of Jewry in the United States, North America, South America, Canada, Palestine. Britain and Australia to concern themselves with the fate of the Polish Jews in the emigration.”