Offers of help from Jews and non-Jews from all parts of the country are pouring into the offices of the Yonkers Jewish Community Center where a fire snuffed out the lives of nine children and three instructors Monday night, the National Jewish Welfare Board reported today.
Sanford Solender, executive vice-president of the JWB, said that in Yonkers, the Young Women’s Christian Association had provided space to the Jewish Center for a temporary office and the Young Men’s Christian Association had offered its facilities for Jewish Center programming. Synagogues, churches, women’s organizations and fraternal orders in Yonkers have offered help and the local Junior Chamber of Commerce announced it was eager to conduct a community-wide fund-raising drive to restore the Jewish Center building, he said.
At the same time, the JWB distributed to its 800 affiliated Centers and YW-YMHAs a special listing of safety guides as a step to help avert similar tragedies. The JWB memorandum to the Centers throughout the country said that “a life-consuming fire has been virtually unknown in Jewish Community Center history” and that the safety guides list had been prepared to assure that “never again will such a tragedy occur.” JWB affiliated Centers throughout the country had offered to hold fund-raising drives and to loan equipment and supplies to the stricken Yonkers Center.
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.
