Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 232, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1919 — HOOSIERS WILL AID IN A GREAT CAUSE [ARTICLE]

HOOSIERS WILL AID IN A GREAT CAUSE

MILLIONS OF MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN STARVING IN ___ FAR EAST. Conditions of Jews in Eastern Countries Graphically Described by Judge Fisher, of Chicago. Indianapolis, Ind. —That Indiana as 1 whole--non-Jew as well as Jew— a is going to answer the appeal of distress from the six million peoples, .of the old world, who are dependent upon America for their very existence, was the message brought to Indfai'apbTTs by ' those who' wTir conduct' the American Jewish Relief Campaign in Indian* 1 from September 29 to Tiefnhor 4, for funds to aid tfre j starving men, women and children of eastern Europe. These assurances of the success of the campaign were given the state organization of the American Jewish Relief Committee at a conference of all Indiana workers of the committee, held. at the Claypool Hotel in this city. Those to conduct the campaign are men and women —Jews, Protestants and Catholics —and the success of the campaign in Indiana means the saving of many thousands of lives, as each dollar given this means life for some war stricken person—and each dollar not given means the shortening of some worthy person’s existence. Every dollar given this fund goes to war Bufferers; the money is spent in the United States; the United States government transports the supplies across the ocean free and 90 per cent of the food distributed is handled by people who do this work to aid .their fellow kinsman and not for compen’The-' paign are underwritten by generous Americans. No appeal for aid from any peoples; no reason why any peoples should be given assistance in return for what they readily gave in £h<x past , find during the war money, clothing and life itself —was ever more decisively given, than that brought to the conference by the Hon. Harry. M.„ Fisher, Judge of the Municipal Court of Chicago. JudgeFisheFs address in part "follows: Judge Makes Strong Appeal. For over eighteen hundred years the Jew has been singled out as the subject of oppression and persecution. And so thick was the plot, and so determined was Russia, at least to exterminate the Jew, that for over a century she sought to put him' In a position where, when the expected war would finally come, his extermination would be immediately complete. Russia knew that the attack would

come from the west, and so. to fortify its western border it created a pale of settlements, and alongside its western border Jewish towns and villages were built up. Russia’s fortifications were Jewish homes. Russia's means of defense on the western border were millions of Jews who would be attacked by the enemy should the enemy come. And so it happened that when tthe war finally came it was the Jews who first suffered its effects. Jewish villages were taken and retaken, eight, ten and a dozen times, and where the inhabitants. before the war, numbered fifty or sixty thousand, we found, at the end of the war only four or five thousand. Wrath Visited Whe* Helpless. During the war, however, the Jews here in America did what they could. Who thought—who dare think that days of suffering and death, where our blood mingled and filled the trenches of France —who thought that there would be a question of Jew, or non-Jew, when peace' would finally come? And so we hoped, so we prayed, and so we dreamed of the coming of the new day. And finally peace did come. But as the roar of the cannon, as the shriek of the shot and the shell died away, what came to our ears? Not voices of rejoicing; no voices of thanksgiving, but the shrill, shrieking voices of suffering mothers, of dying babes, of innocent old men, who were being made martyrs *by the persecution of murderers, in lands erstwhile themselves liberated. Do ybu know that today six million Jews in Poland, Galicia and Roumania are actually dependent upon American charity for their daily bread? And do you know of what that daily bread consists? It is not the bread which you are accustomed to eat. Instead, It is just a little warm water, that they call soup, for which thousands and thousands stand In line before the soup -kitchens once And do you know that every night, when the soup kitchens close, thousands remain who have - not been reached, because even that little would not go round? Do you know that that very soup contains only eight pounds of meat for nvAry thmnmnd persons? —And that they get that only once a day? Such’ are some of the conditions that confront millions of our people today. „ It is not charity that we ask of you. We ask you to take advantage of this great opportunity to redeem your own souls, by buying life, as t,he chairman has well said. Bread is all we ask. Only life for those who still survive, and nothing more. Every dollar, every penny you give, will go to sustain some life. ,i Are you going to answer that appeal? Or is that mother pleading in vain? Are those tittle ones £o suffer the fate of those who preceded them? I make the answer for you: Americans will never fail, when suffering calls upon them for relief.