The majority of the several thousand Polish Jews who at the beginning of the war were evacuated to Kirghizia from Russian-acquired Polish territory have adopted themselves to the new conditions of life and acquired new trades which give them an opportunity to live a normal life, it was reported here today from Frunze, capital of the Kirghizian Soviet Republic.
About 2,500 of the Polish Jews are employed in factories and on construction work as well as in offices and on collective farms, in the Frunze region alone. Others are working in the Osk and in Djalalabad regions, chiefly in timber yards and in coal pits. About 150 Polish Jews topped their production norms working at construction of a new power station in Voroshilovsk, and 200 Polish Jews are participating in the building of a railway which will connect Frunze with the regions of Tian-Sban and Isyk-Kul.
Local authorities are helping the Polish Jews to adjust themselves since most of them were formerly small traders and artisans in Poland. Many of the Jews made the adjustment easily and some of them have received prizes and certificates of merit. Abraham Makever, a Jewish engineer who had been jobless in pre-war Poland, is building sugar refineries in the Frunze region. Rivka Kotlitskaya is chief engineer of a thermoelectric station of a sugar refinery in Karabalty. Polish Jews are also working on peat fields, forty kilometers from the city of Frunze.
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.
