Page Six
THE JEWISH NEWS
Friday, Uuly TZ, 1941
One of our century's foremost career-
ists, Henrietta Szold is mother to 9,000
refugees and the first lady of modern
Palestine.
She Prevented
,000 Murders
By William F. McDermott
HE CHANCES are at
least 20 to 1 that you have never even heard
the name of Henrietta Szold. Yet she is one of
the superwomen of the world today, accomp-
lishing at 82 years of age incredible things in
saving the lives of the war orphans of Europe.
Her disciples credit her with having prevented
the slaughter of at least nine thousand home-
less Jewish waifs.
Take Miss Szold's latest "stunt." When she
heard early in the winter that nearly a thous-
and Polish refugee children were stranded at
a port in the Caspian Sea after a hegira of
three years—during which, according to offi-
cial reports, they often "slept in the woods,
half-naked, exposed to disease, eaten up by
vermin,"—she immediately asked for their
charge.
She negotiated with the Iran government for
four months before she got their release. Final-
ly she secured permission, only to have the
Iraq (Arabian) government refuse them transit
across its borders. The sole alternative was to
send them on another treacherous journey
through the Persian Gulf, and up the Red Sea
to Suez, where special trains carried them to
the new Promised Land.
. This convoy of waifs from the charnel
house of Europe was only one of the migrant
band _ s whom the aged woman has helped—her
life- since she was 60 years of age has been a
romance of rescue. Backed by the
Hadassah societies of America,
which she organized and which
have grown to 135 thousand strong,
she has been able to accomplish
miraculous things. In the last sev-
en years these women of high and
low estate — professors, clerks,
housewives, stenographers and
machine workers have poured
three million dollars into the cof-
fers of Miss Szold's Palestinian
ventures.
Henrietta Szold, a shy, retiring
woman to whom fame is an em-
barrassment, frail in appearance
and yet a dynamo of energy, high-
*V,
ly intellectual but willing to walk
miles through mud to aid an ailing
baby, was born in Baltimore just
before the Civil War. Her earliest recollection
is as child three or four years old helping
women in the back room of an old house make
bandages for wounded soldiers. Early she visited
her ancestral home in Germany, and traveled
over Europe. When the Russian persecution of
the Jews began in 1882, and vast numbers of
them sought asylum in America, Rabbi Szold
and his daughter turned their home into a
house of refuge. Henrietta proposed the found-
ing of night schools to aid the refugees.
Turning Point in Career
Here, too, she became interested in Zionism
—the restoration of Palestine to the Jews. But
the editorial field lured . her, and for 23 years
she served as secretary of the Jewish Publica-
tion Society. In 1909, her health failing, she
took a trip to Europe.
This was the turning point in her career.
She was in Jerusalem. A woman of high learn-
ing, holding a distinguished position, in her
50th year she wrote: "If I were only 20 years
younger, I would feel that my field is here."
Ten years later—when she was 60—she began
he/ life's work at that very spot. •
Back home, she led 38 New York women in
founding Hadassah. The first project decided.
upon was the introduction of the American
system of visiting nurses in Jerusalem. Several
trained nurses were sent from this country to
launch the work. Later Nathan Straus became
interested, and he and his wife financed for
Miss Szold the first_ settlement house under
her 'direct-oil. -
'
44*-10.1184$1104 1100144 $001.114 irk% 44" fir4004
"One of the superwomen in the
world," is the tribute paid Herietta
Szold by William F. McDermott in a
feature article entitled She Prevented
9,000 Murders," in the July issue of
Coronet.
Referring to her negotiations which
have led to the saving of the latest
group of children who were brought to
Palestine by way of the Caspian Sea,
through the Persian Gulf, up the Red
Sea to Suez, then to the Promised Land,
Mr. McDermott's tribute is contained in
the following excerpts from his article.
- Human welfare activities gave a mighty
spurt to Hadassah, which had grown by 1917
to 4,500 members. But war conditions forced
the abandonment of the nursing service. Miss
Szold then turned her energies to the organi-
zation of the American Zionist Medical Unit,
which reached Palestine in the summer of 1918 .
with 44 medical men and nurses, ambulances
and trucks, and 50 thousand dollars' worth of
drugs and instruments. It had a budget of 250
thousand dollars, for which she felt largely re-
sponsible. - • -
Joins War on Malaria
Shortly after her arrival, she joined the war
against malaria, which was claiming 300 vic-
tims a week among immigrants alone. She or-
ganized a sanitary and prophylactic campaign
barren shore of the Dead Sea into fertile, high
ly productive land.
A fishing village called Hulatta has been
founded upon the shores of Lake Huleh by
Youth Aliyah graduates.
The heroic efforts of these young people to
rebuild Palestine by setting up their own
colonies and pursuing their training, has re-
sulted in Hadassah establishing _a revolving
loan fund of 80 thousand dollars to assist them.
This was raised in honor of Miss Szold's 80th
birthday. Her loyal followers also gave her 10
thousand dollars as a personal tribute—which
she immediately donated to the loan.fund!..
And still these pathetic little refugees ar-
rive. Some have been washed up on the shores,
frOm wrecked ships. Fourteen were saved from
the S. S. Salvator which foundered and sank in
the Black Sea. But most pathetic of all were
the 70 prospective Youth Aliyah candidates on
the S. S. Struma. Miss Szold had worked night
and day to get their release from the unsea-
worthy boat. She got the order, but failed in
her task—for the ship never made port.
The next day Miss Szold visited a refugee
camp near Haifa, where arrivals without visas
were interned. She found 30 children fasting
in memory of those who died on the Struma.
She secured their release and undertook their
care in the name of the Struma dead. Likewise
she arranged for care under the Youth Aliyah.
program of 172 child survivors of the S. S.
Patria, which exploded and sank in Haifa
harbor.
Social Welfare Program
in Jerusalem and in the hinterland, saying pub-
licly that the country could be cleaned up in
nine months and the disease could be con-
quered. Years later she went through the dread
Arab-Jewish massacres—the "175 days of mur-
der"—at the height of which her Arab friends
sent her flowers as 4 personal tribute. At 67
she was elected one of the three governors of
all Zionist affairs in Palestine. Back in Balti-
more for . her 75th brithday celebration, she
found Hadassah had 50 thousand members to
support her work.
The year that Hitler came to power the
crowning achievement of Henrietta Szold be-
gan. Often, she had dreamed of launching a
pilgrimage of Jewish city youth back to the
land, that they might live again by the plow
and the saw. Thus the Youth Aliyah move-
ment developed, which soon was to become a
migration of children living in the shadow of
death to a land of freedom:
In 1934 the first band of Jewish children
arrived from Berlin and were settled in dormi-
tories. From then on the trickle of juvenile
refugees swelled to a flood.
More than eight thousand have been aided,
with 650 now grown up, serving with United
.Nations forces.
And swhat has becorne of the earlier proteges
of a woman who couldn't quit even at 80, and
who apologized in a personal letter to• a friend
that "I can work only 12 hours a day now?"
Three-fourthS of those who have finished their
two-year course of work have gone,back to the
land`;- -One rtsti of hUnd-recf is turning the
41#31'4 it ttr414:44-*
11 f- f 16.141* * SPOPAIFt*
Meantime Hadassah, acting with the courage
and zeal of its founder, has gone forward with
a remarkable program of social welfare in
Palestine.
The. range of human welfare services is al-.
most- innumerable. Ranging the country you
can find tuberculosis hospitals and clinics; ru-
ral medical campaigns, with rural district hos-
pitals; dental, sex, and mental hygience pro-
grams, orthopaedic and corrective gymnastic
clinics; nutrition cookery classes; 48 infant
welfare stations, providing prenatal and post-
natal care; feeding programs for 25 thousand
children, and medical supervision of 75 thous-
and school children; domestic science units;
school hygiene service and anti-trachoma cam-
paign; 35 playgrounds, and summer camps;
and extensive land reclamation.
In recent years Hadassah has been vastly
aided by Junior Hadassah, to which many
working girls belong.
The movement is one of the most dramatic
of centuries. It is proof that an old civilization
can be renewed and immeasurably improved.
The fact that new Jewish settlements have
made it possible for Palestine to support 414
thousand more Moslems, 416 thousand more
Jews, and 61 thousand more Christians than in
1919, and on a far higher level than ever before,
indicates that Hen rietta Szold did not idly
dream.
_
Copyright, 1943, by Esquire, Inc„
919 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill.
(Coronet; -Rely 1943)