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Atlanta’s United Jewish Appe
Atlanta s United Appeal Has Successful and Enthusiastic
Start Leading to Climatic Expectations
Special to the Southern Israelite
Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver
O PENING with a dinner tendered in
honor of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver,
of Cleveland, Ohio, the United
Jewish Appeal will launch a brief but
intensive effort to raise fifteen thousand
dollars in Atlanta for the Joint Distri
bution Committee, the Jewish Agency for
Palestine and the Wider Scope Fund of
the B’nai B’rith. The dinner for Rabbi
Silver will be given at the Temple
House, Peachtree and Fifteenth Streets,
at six o’clock, Wednesday evening, Feb
ruary 24th. This will be followed by
an address to which the general public
is invited in the main auditorium of the
Temple.
Rabbi Silver will make an informal
talk at the dinner before his appearance
in the auditorium.
Over three hundred reservations have
been made for the dinner, including lead
ing personalities in the local Jewish com
munity. Dr. David Marx will introduce
Rabbi Silver, who will be heard for the
first time by Atlanta Jewry.
By an intensive canvass of the commu
nity the five days following the open
ing of the campaign, the leaders of the
movement hope to raise the sum which
has been set as a goal. “The enthusiastic
response on the part of the workers and
prominent community leaders, assures us
that we shall not be disappointed in our
expectations,” stated Mr. Samuel E. Levy,
prominent local business man and chair
man of the Appeal.
Similar sentiments were expressed by
Henry A. Alexander, one of the Hon
orary Chairmen of the fund, who stated:
“The success of this appeal will be an
effective test of the sincerity and Jewish
ness of Atlanta Jewry. Their satisfac
tory response to the call for help that
reaches them will be an eloquent testi
monial to their humanity and sense of
duty.”
Mr. J. Saul, a veteran of many Jewish
campaigns in the city, and another of the
Honorary Chairmen, stressed the im
portance of raising funds at this par
ticular time. “The world depression
meant the cutting on of much of the in
come from the institutions .md individ
uals in Europe and Palestine that de
pended upon the benevolence of their for
eign brethren. The results are catastro
phic. The misery and despair that re
sulted is beyond description. Men are lit
erally starving to death in the streets of
Poland, Roumania and other Eastern
European localities. Regardless of the
local economic situation, we must answer
a desperate call for help.”
A similar picture of conditions among
Jews abroad was painted by Pierre Van
Passen, noted journalist, in a recent talk
before the men’s group of the Temple
and the Council of Jewish Women. 'Phis
writer, a non-Jew, made a touching ap
peal on behalf of the sufferers across the
seas.
Sam E. Levy, Active Chairman
The work of the Joint Distribution
Committee extends over all of Europe and
Asia. Under its care, are thousands of
orphaned children and widowed women.
The colonization work in Russia receives
its attention. The relief work in Turkey,
where thousands of homeless wanderers
are stranded, is in its charge.
Especially tragic is the condition of
the Jews in Poland. Once a well-to-do
section of world Jewry, these people have
been reduced to beggary, first, by war
and then by a systematic anti-Semitic
taxing program of the newly set-up Polish
government. While open outbreaks and
violence against the Jews have of re
cent years been frowned upon by the
government, it set about to systematically
tax them out of existence. The results
are patent. The ghettos of Warsaw,
Lodz, Lublin and other Jewish centers, re
semble vast morgues of men and women
beyond all human hope or pride, heads
and limbs swollen with hunger, faces
beyond recognition by privation, fear and
misery, dressed in what was once human
garments, slowly, painfully starving until
all life passes out of the bundle of bones
and rags that move like weary shadows.
. With the coming of the world depres
sion, many of the institutions that were
supported by American charity had to
close. Orphans, undernourished and ill-
clad were turned out on the snow-cov
[4]
ered streets to shift for themselves.
Other children’s institutions have cut their
rations until the food that is served merely
keeps the gnawing hunger alive. Tuber
culosis is rampant. In Warsaw alone
seventy-five thousand children are in the
secondary stages of that disease. Suffer
ing beyond human description dulled their
spirits to a point where suicide became
a well established method to end an un
bearable existence. So prevalent have
suicides in the ghetto become until the
Rabbis had to forbid the giving of a
Jewish burial to a suicide in an attempt
to discourage mass self-extermination.
Little better is the situation in Rou
mania, Galicia and other eastern Euro
pean countries. With the speed of prairie
fire, anti-Semitism swept the youth of
these countries, entered the universities
as well as social and business circles.
Jews are not permitted to study in peace.
Frequent outbreaks in the colleges leave
the Jewish victims bleeding in their
class rooms. Sporadic street attacks
leave unconscious , pitifully maimed fig
ures crumpled on the sidewalks. Jews are
not employed, are not traded with, are
beset upon—pariahs in a world rampant
J. Saul, Honorary Chairman
" ith chauvinism and nationalism run
amuck.
With Hittlerism threatening Germany,
the Jews in that country, three genera
tions after their political emancipation,
after becoming integrated in the life of
\ ? cou ntry, giving it its foremost poets,
thinkers and scientists, are facing a fate
\° that of their eastern brethren.
W ith immigration shut out of America,
Canada and South Africa, these Jews are
tr ^PP ec * m their hellish ghettos.
he only land today ready and willing
to welcome the wandering Jew is Pales-
tine. It is there where the most fortunate
of those who escape beyond the bounda
ries of their native lands in Eastern
Europe, find new Kfe and hope in field
★
aiivi i a l in.
# xi.cic a remarkaUi* metamor
phosis takes place. The be
are straightened, the sallow complex!™
of sunless alleys gives way to the tan
of the open. Muscles grown weak bv
disuse, harden under the strain 0 f pick
and shovel. The haunted look of the
disenfranchised gives way to self-conh-
dence. Self-respect comes. Hope come*
This new Jewish life that spells regen
eration to thousands is created under the
auspices of the Jewish Agency.
The mandate given to Great Britain by
the League of Nations for the governing
of Palestine provides for the creation of
a Jewish Agency to cooperate with the
government in the creation of a home for
Jews in Palestine. This agency is com
posed of an equal number of Zionist and
non-Zionist. Among its early leader*
were Chaim Weizman, and the late Lord
Melchett and Louis Marshall. Felix M
Warburg, Nahum Sokolow and other
leaders of world Jewry head it today.
The work of this agency includes the
settling of the Jews on the land in Pales
tine, the support of the educational sys
tem and similar projects. Included in
this Appeal is the Wider Scope Fund of
the B’nai B’rith. Supported by this fund
are the Hillel Foundation and the Anti-
Defamation League. The Hillel Founda
tion operates in various American Uni
versities, interesting the Jewish student
body in Jewish life and activities and
training the future generation of the Jew
ish leaders for the responsibilities that
will be theirs.
Of great importance is the work of the
Anti-Defamation League which intere't*
itself in the American screen, press and
stage, preventing the defamation of the
Henry A. Alexandi
Honorary Chairman
THE SOUTHERN ISF ELITE