While asserting that the Jewish colonists in the newly opened autonomous Jewish Region in the Crimea, known as the Freidorf Region, will never have such trouble with their Moslem neighbours as the Jewish colonists in Palestine have experienced, because there is no “bourgecis Imperialism” in this region to set race against race, M. Merezhin, the Jewish Communist leader in an address before the Moscow members of the Jewish colonisation organisations Ozet and Comzet, nevertheless went on the paint a gloomy picture of the existing economic conditions there.
Of 4,500 families in the region, M. Merezhin said, only 2,700 families have homes, the other 1,800 families being practically roofless. He and other speakers who followed him described some of the other hardships. There is no medical aid to speak of in the district, they said. There are six or seven medical stations in the region and only one physician. People have to travel twenty five versts to visit a doctor in a country where the roads are sometimes impassable. Numberous cases of scarlet fever and typhoid go without medical aid. Fear of contagion frequently disorganises the work in the Region. Thus, the book-keeper in one of the collectives had to be sent back because the books of the collective happened to be in a house where there was a scarlet fever case and there was no one who would venture to enter the house in order to take the books and disinfect them.
No more cheerful were the reports about the cultural conditions in these colonies. The colonists are generally of a culturally higher type, the speakers said, but the local libraries afford them less than a dozen antiquated books. An orchestra has been organised for the children to keep them amused and busy, but all they have found to play on are bottles, spoons and little combs. No instruments have yet been provided.
Freidorf was opened as a Jewish autonomous region, M. Merezhin went on, despite the fact that the present Jewish population is in a decided minority, numbering only 30 per cent. of the total population. The Russian, Tatar and German colonists in the region, he said, had insisted on making it a Jewish autonomous region, in order to express their whole-hearted sympathy with the Jews in their struggle to adjust themselves to a new life.
The Tatars and Germans in the region, he added, expect a great deal of progress to result from the influx of Jewish colonists, who would build up the region quickly by means of the new types of crops which the Government is planning to introduce. In Palestine, he said, the Arabs are antagonised by the Jews coming to settle upon land occupied by Arabs for centuries, but in Crimea, the area on which are Jews are settling is an entirely new place of settlement, and all who are there are equally newcomers. There can therefore be no question of accusing the Jewish immigrants of taking away land from the older settlers, and consequently, he said, one of the primary reasons for antisemitism is removed.
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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.
