7
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE
Why Give More than your Share?
Little Children Are Starving—Young Girls Are Selling Their Bodies. Mothers Are
Becoming Insane. The Jewish People Are Dying Out
es
SAFES,
VAULT
DOORS
Peter Olfs Safe Co.
Storing
By RABBI JUDAH P. MAGNES
go to the soup kitchen?" "Ali, better
to embrace within our arms all the starve." Then I went to another
Jews, wherever they may be, wher - room where there was a woman and
a child of about two, trying to draw
ever they may be in great need.
milk from her dried-up breasts; and
At every soup kitchen you see little
girls and little boys with these sau- I asked her if she had eaten that day,
cers or bowls sitting around on the and she said: "No." "And why not
steps or standing in the halls or down go to the soup kitchen?" "Ah, it is
in the courtyards, little groups of so far. Sometimes 1 get something
them, and always, always, the older and at other times 1 don't. Why
should I go?" Too weak, too indif-
child, little mother of 11 or 12, or a
little Jewish Gibor, little Jewish ferent, to provide food for herself
hero of 11 or 12, always the older one, and for her babe that day! Then I
giving the younger to drink first. What went into another place where there
self-restraint there is in these Jewish were 50 rooms around a gallery-50
rooms, perhaps each one five feet
children of ours! Shall we let them
starve, shall we let them die? One wide. I have never seen such human
little boy had his meal of warm water beings, and I looked and looked and
and groats and a quarter of a pound asked myself, "Were they Jews?"
of bread in the Kinderheim, a chil- Slatternly, slovenly, diseased women
dren's home—God bless every one of with children hanging at their skirts!
And where had they eaten that day?
them, these Kinderheime—and when
Nowhere. And why had they not
lie came home to his mother he still
eaten? Ach, why should they go to
felt hungry, and he said: "Mamma, I
want something more to eat," and his the soup kitchen; you have to stand
mother said: "My boy, you have had in line too long, and the children will
something to eat today in the Kinder- take care of themselves. And how do
heim, whereas your two little brothers the children take care of themselves?
and two little sisters have had noth- Some of these little boys go out into
the street and beg, and some of them
ing to cat as yet at home, and the
bread and soup that we have here go out and steal, and some of them
must be for them." So the little fel- go out and lose themselves, never
low thought a moment and shook his coining back to their natural protec-
tors. Do you wonder, then, when a
wise, his old little head, and said:
"Yes, that's right." A little boy un- people is so far gone as to have sonic
of its mothers indifferent as to where
derstanding the justice of it!
sonic of their children are fed day by
SaVe the Children!
day, that I say to you that if we don't
When these Kinderheime were
conic to help, and if this war does not
formed, when the thousands and the
stop, we shall have demoralization
tens of thousands of Jews came out
of the cities that had been evacuated, that is worse even than hunger itself?
What of Our Girls? Hunger or—
when the sick and the insane and the
old, and the women in childbirth and
Upon another occasion I told about
the children at their mothers' breasts
a young woman, and I shall tell about
came marching through the cities, the her again, because she appears to me
residents asked, "Where shall we put
to be symbolic of the Jewish woman-
them?" and they knew not. But one
hood of our people. She was a beau-
cry went out; one cry went to the tiful young woman, 19 or 20, seated
heart of every one, this cry you hear at a table, alone, reading. I asked her
the echoes of, faint though they be: what the book was. It was, she said,
"We do not know where to put the a Yiddish translation of Knut Ham-
young women, the young men, the sun, and I asked her what the title
mothers, the fathers. But save the was, and she said, "Hunger." I asked
children!" And I say to you here,— her, "Does he understand something
save the Jewish children who look to about hunger?" And she said, "Oh,
you for bread. The old men and the
he talks of hunger as though it were
old women will pass away, and if this two hundred or three hundred years
war continues longer, God knows how ago." I asked her, "Do you know
many of them will die in their tracks!
more about hunger than lie does?"
Perhaps the young mothers will never
And she said, "Perhaps I do know
see their husbands again, gone to the more."
war. But save, in God's name, these
Now, that young woman made pa-
little children, these children of yours per flowers for a living, but for a
and mine, these children with beau- whole year she had no work. That
teous eyes, these children that sing young woman might have gone out
and play, this hope of our people, on the streets of Warsaw and sold
these children that have with them herself. But she did not, and so thou-
Opening and Repairing
the possession of Judaism and the tra- sands and thousands of Jewish young
dition of our long lineage of glory women are braving the pangs of hun-
Combinations Changed
and of hope. I beg of you, men and ger rather than going onto the
women, save the Jewish children from streets to sell themselves to the hand-
some officers and soldiers that till the
starvation!
cities. Thousands and thousands of
Shall Jews Be Demoralized?
I went into a third story room, them are facing hunger, I say. Some
of them, I am told, have become in-
quite by chance. I saw there a woman
with a child. There were some bed sane because they have seen the
clothes on the floor, rags, sacks, a choice before - them, either a life of
table and a chair; nothing else. I say shame or a life of hunger. I have
135 Fort St. East
I came in quite by chance. I asked seen some of these .persons myself,
this woman if she had had something some Jewish men and women who
Cadillac 2650-J
to cat today, and she said simply— were held in sonic rooms in Vilna,
almost brutally—'•What you see me made insane by the miseries that they
have gone through. I have it upon
with now in my room, that I am, and
that I have." "And why did you not the testimony of German officers, and
we have statistics compiled by Ger-
man investigators to show, that al-
though there are all too many Jewish
women who, for the sake of bread, for
the sake of bread for their children,
Phone Cadillac 5190
their sisters and their mothers, have
been compelled to sell themselves,
yet the great mass of our Jewish wo-
W. Sherman Lister
manhood has remained steadfast, has
REAL ESTATE
remained loyal and true to our high
MORTGAGE LOANS, INVESTMENTS
traditions of chastity, to our noble
heritage of family purity.
The Children Have Forgotten How
403 Farwell Building
to Walk.
Detroit
I was standing one day in the court-
yard of a place that was used as a
Jewish hospital, and there suddenly
(Continued on page 10)
E know not what is transpir-
ing today in Russia, where
three millions of our brethren
still live. We know but very little of
the misery that is overtaking our peo-
ple in the lovely land of the fathers,
in Palestine. But we know that there
are about two millions and a half of
our brethren in Poland, Lithuania and
Galicia, hunger staring them in the
fact.
In the city of Warsaw imagine to-
day at least 75,000 persons, Jews,
standing in line from 11 o'clock in the
morning until 1 o'clock. Who are
these persons?
Who arc these people in this long
line in Warsaw, in Vilna, in Lubin, in
Lemberg, in Kalish, in all the towns
and cities, large and small? Some of
them arc your mothers and your fath-
ers and your brothers and sisters.
They stand there, the old men bent
and broken, the old women sore eyed
from weeping, the wives with their
husbands in the army, the children,
with brothers and sisters, waiting at
home. They stand there, every one
of them with a pail or a pot under
his arm, the pail .wrapped about in an
old cloth or rag to keep the warmth
within, and slowly, step by step, they
come nearer and nearer to those great
caldrons boiling and seething with the
soup that your money is to give them.
Shall Children Starve?
What will happen to us and to our
children and our children's children
if we do not have the moral courage
to stop and to face the calamity, to
Repairing
Remodeling
stop and to help, to stop and to try
ERNEST
W.
PLEGER
Manufacturing
Furrier
26 BROADWAY
Over Brcitmeyer's House of Flowers
Phone Cherry 870
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