Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 December 1920 — LAUGHTER OF CHILD SCARCE IN POLAND [ARTICLE]

LAUGHTER OF CHILD SCARCE IN POLAND

"In all the time I was in Poland, I scarcely once saw a child laugh,” declared Dr Harry Plotz, discoverer of the typhus baccilus, in a report to the European Relief Council on medical conditions among the Jewish population of Poland, based on his recent investigations there for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. “The most deplorable sight of all the miseries In Poland Is the condition of the children,” Dr. Plotz said. “Infant mortality is exceedingly high because of under-nourishment and the high percentage of contagious diseases. In large part mothers must resort to artificial feeding as they are unable to nurse their children. In many cltieg I saw underfed children, suffering with diseases, wandering about the streets with no place to go, begging for bread.” Tuberculosis has become prevalent among the Jewish children, largely due to the overcrowded conditions in which they are forced to live, their lack of nourishing food and warm clothing, according to Dr. Plotz. Typhus, which killed- thousands of Jews hast winter in the worst epidemic Poland has ever seen will recur again, he said, as conditions are much worse among the Jews than ever before. “Favus, a contagious skin disease, , is now rapidly spreading from child ] to child,” he continued. “In Vilna j there are 11,000 cases among the Jew- > lsh children alone. Smallpox, too, is prevalent throughout Poland and the Ukraine and children, with wide- S spread eruptions and temperature, have been seen running about the streets. There are thousands of cases i every year, which vaccination would 1 prevent, but there Is no vaccine.” Dr. Plotz told how in Lithuanian villages he found children, six and i seven years old, unable to walk or j talk, the result of malnutrition. In I regions where-whole towns had been ! destroyed during the war, he found j families crowded in miserable dug- ! •uts. ■ ' '