Without American help, declared David M. Bressler, in an address broadcast over WEAF’s Jewish hour yesterday, the greatest tragedy in Jewish history would have occurred in Eastern Europe. Mr. Bressler gave a vivid description of Jewish conditions, as he saw them in a recent tour of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Galicia, Roumania and other countries, which he made with Joseph C. Hyman, secretary of the Joint Distribution Committee of which Mr. Bressler is a member.
In the course of his radio-talk in which he outlined the work which the Jewish Agency has undertaken in Palestine, Mr. Bressler referred to the Allied Jewish Campaign of which he is one of the chairmen. “This is an effort,” he said, “to raise $6,000,000 for the year 1930, of which $3,500,000 is to go to the Joint Distribution for the continuance of the great work which it is doing in Eastern Europe; to strengthen the credit organizations, and free loan societies which furnish Jews with enough capital to earn a meagre livelihood for themselves and their families; the great work which the Joint Distribution Committee is doing to train Jewish young men and women so that they can fit into the new industrial developments in many European countries will be carried forward; thousands of children will be taught useful occupations; thousands of orphans will be fostered; thousands of sick will be restored to health, and the religious and cultural institutions of European Jewry sustained.
“A campaign for this purpose alone would, as in the past, be sufficient to appeal to the Jews of America, who have shown how quick they are to respond to the pleas of their suffering brethren. But the Allied Jewish Campaign will also devote $2,500,000 out of its $6,000,000 to Palestine; for the upbuilding of that land which has so great a place in all Jewish hearts; to carry out the projects for its economic, agricultural, industrial, educational and cultural development in accordance with the plans of the Jewish Agency, in which, under the leadership of men like the never-to-be-forgotten Louis Marshall, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Felix M. Warburg, Lieut. Gov. Lehman, Dr. Cyrus Adler, Dr. Lee K. Frankel, Rabbi A. H. Silver, Morris Rothenberg, Judge William M. Lewis, Bernard Flexner, Rabbi Samuel Schulman, Dr. Julius Morgenstern, Dr. Abram Simon—to name just a few—Zionists and non-Zionists are united, on a basis of absolute equality, to carry forward the great reconstruction work accomplished there over the past decade.
“The Allied Jewish Campaign aims, in the last analysis, to weld the Jews of America—Orthodox, Reform, Socialist, Capitalist, Zionists, non-Zionists, whatever they may be—in a common bond of service. Its success will bring hope and courage to our brethren. Through it we, the more fortunately circumstanced will give of our strength to the weak and despairing of our people. We will enable them to endure, to resist the pressure that is crushing them down; we will give them hope and enable them to march forward to the goal of self-dependence which is their aspiration.”
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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.