4
JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
Thiireday, April 10, 1941^
To feIk>w=Canadians of Jewish faith our sincere wishes for a happy Passover,
Vancouver's Home-Owned Newspaper
Phone MArine 1161 for Daily Home Delivery
Sam Hyinan
and
The
Great West Life
Assurance Co.
Wish Tlieir Many Policyholders and Friends
A Happy Passover
Eoyal Bank Building Vancouver, B.C.
A. F., NATION, Mgr,
To Our Many Friends We Wish a Very Happy Passover
After the Passover Holidays get a fuH snpply'of *
RYE BREAD POMPERNIEEL BREAD TWIST BREAD
WHITE LOAVES BROWN LOAVES BEI6EL and CAKES
BAKED FBESH EVERY DAT
1100 W. Broadway
by Morris C. Troper
The story of Passover is the story of the dellveruice from oppression of a persecuted people. the folio winjg^artlcle, MoRrlsC Troper, chairman of the European Ezecn-tive Coandl of the Joint Distribution Conunittee, discusses tlie renewed hope tliat the Jews of the stricken continent of Europe will find In the commemoration of the saga of deliverance.
—THE EDITOB.
Passover this year lias a poignant significance for us. History has seen fit to repeat itself in reenacting the story of bondage and travail of the Jews in Pharoah's Egypt. But history has made several substitutions. It has substituted almost an entire world for Egypt; it has substituted the Gestapo for the Egyptian slave master, the Nuremberg Laws lor Pharoah's decrees, and it has also substituted five million Jews for the six hundred thousand who crossed the Red Sea. What will no doubt be uppermost in our wishes as we again read the Passover story this year is that history shall continue to repeat itself faithfully and record another day of deliverance for a people in pain and servitude.
But it is not easy to derive the full measure of solace from symbolism-even the hearty, optimistic symbolism inherent in the story of Passover —as we read the modern version of Jewish suffering. It is particularly difficult for one who has witnessed such suffering and who knows that it must be. ministered to in more than fifty countries in Europe, the Near and Far East and Latin America.
Since 1938, it has been my privilege to serve as chairman of the European Executive Council of the Joint Distribution Committee, which for twenty-six years has executed the task of relieving our stricken brethren the world over. Memories of the scenes of agony and supplication I have had to witness in these few years crowd and suffocate my mind in an unending kaleidescope until itimie • seems to' h&ve'becin tepudttttfed; and like Rabbi Eliezer in the legend of the Hagadah, I must exclaim, "Verily, I am like a man of seventy years of age!"
This is not a purely personal note. When I left J.D.C.'s European headquarters in Lisbon to return to this country I was the bearer of heartrending pleas for increased help from every distressed Jewish community in the overseas lands. I was charged to bring these pleas before the Jews of America so that they may know their duty of rescuing and rehabilitating war-stricken and persecuted Jews overseas.
Since this duty can today be carried out effectively only by the Joint Distribution Committee, I must stress the fact that J.D.C.'s role is a practical one. Tou cannot relieve suffering with symbolism or good wishes which are not backed up by food, clothing, medicines. You cannot instill the all-important imponderables of strengfth and courage with which to resist suffering until a better day, without first supplying the primary necessities of life.
Yet I know that the instinct which tells the Jew he shall be preserved despite his afflictions—that instinct which flowers in the springrtide of Passover—^is a sound one. It is founded upon a past which has given him a heritage of survival and, more immediately, upon a present which is protecting that heritage, because you cannot help one million men, women and children to continue to stay alive, as the Joint Distribution Committee did last year, without generating v/aves of hope, impulses of the will to live.
Cast your mind's eye to Poland— that part of Poland which is being held by the Germans—and try to sense the hope which will throb this year in the breasts of 1,500,000 Jews over whom their Nazi masters have cast the pall of slavery. Passover can be made to mean that their fellow Jews of the great community of America have not forsaken them. The portion of matzoth which American Jews, through the J.D.C., will make available to the Jews of Poland will not only still their hunger but also fortify their courage and confirm their hopes. Each and every day the J.D.C. is doing something to confirm their hopes; because each and every day the JJ3.C. helps to keep alive 630,000 Polish Jews through 2,046 agencies and institutions of help and rescue—agencies which operate in 408 cities and towns throughout Nazi-held Poland.
I have told you of Poland because the Jews of Poland present the J.DC.
with its largest problem in intensity and magnitude. I have not told you of what Passover will mean to the Jews in Old Germany, Austria, Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia; or in Lisbon, Shanghai, Kobe, Mauritius and Bombay, where even those who have escaped from war and persecution must still be helped because many of them have been able to get this far and no further.
I have not told you of what Passover will mean to the tens of thousands of refugees in France who will eat their matzoth, knowing full well that this special relief is but part of the daily relief which the J.D,C. brings to them.
I have not told you of the fervency with which the Rabbis and Yeshivah students, who are now on their way from Lithuania across the wastes of Siberia to the Pacific Ocean, will celebrate Passover and draw a parallel between their own deliverance, efifected by the JJ>.C., and the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt. I know that that will be so because each Passover in the last eight years which has found refugees on their way to freedom and a new life has also found them inspired and buoyed with new and increased hope.
And for the Jews who have come to the countries of Central and South America, where the J.D.C. is making available all the funds it can to promote the welfare of the newcomers so that another link may be maintained in J.D.C.'s lifeline—^in those countries the spirit of Passover will perhaps glow with more than wonted brightness because there Passover will be observed at bedecked Seder tables amid high hopes for the future.
But I do want to tell you of how the J.D.C. helps Jews in Europe to commemorate Passover. I want to tell you "how" because it will give you an insight into the operational methods of the J.D.C. in relieving and rehabilitating distressed Jews overseas.
■'iiLast"year, ata'cost of $205,000 the J.D.C. bought 726,079 kilograms of matzoth and 26,640 kilograms of goose fat, vegetable fat and canned kosher meat in Rumania, Lithuania, Latvia, Yukoslavia, Hungary and Belgium—and shipped it for redistribution to Berlin, Vieima, Prague and German-occupied Poland. This year, with an increasing number of countries under Nazi domination, the J.p.C. has had to readjust its machinery—but " like Great Britain, it "delivers the goods."
"Delivering the goods," however, does not mean that the JJ>.C. ships matzoth or other supplies from the United States in violation of the British blockade. The J.D.C. has not been confronted with the problem of the British blockade because it has never been, and is not now, in the practice of shipping supplies from America overseas. All the J.D.C. work is conducted through the medium of local committees in each country of operation. These committees secure the necessary foodstuffs, clothing and medical equipment locally.
Naturally, it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain large quantities of food. It is true that there is a general food shortage in many of the countries of Europe. Nevertheless, at one time there may be a supply of potatoes; at another time there may be a supply of cabbage available. Even though there is at no one time a complete and general supply
pf foodstuffs, thre is enough to carry on. The task of the JJ5.C. is to see to it that there is some equitable distribution of such foodstuffs as are available among people who have no funds whatsoever with which to purchase food. These people who have money are managing to get along in one way or another even though they may not enjoy fully balanced diets. Those who have no money cannot obtain even the food which is in the market and therefore have to go to the Jewish relief committees. The JJ>.C. supplies funds with which these committees can purchase some of the available foodstuffs to be distributed among penniless and destitute Jewish people.
In feeding the suiferers from Nazism, therefore, the JJD.C. does not take any step which increases the total food supply in Europe. On the contrary, the effect of its action is to achieve a more equitable distribution of such food as is already stored on the European continent.
When the problem of securing and distributing Passover supplies arose last year, the J.D.C. was confronted with a number of tasks engendered by the German conquest of Poland and the shortage of flour and fats in the belligerent territories. Nevertheless, the JJ>.C. was able to make available to the Jews of Greater Germany and Poland more than 750,000 kilograms of Passover food.
Behind these cold figures, there is a story which, if written in full, would make a thrilling epic of success against many odds and difficulties. It is a story of how agents of the J.D,C. were on the job every minute of the days before Passover in both neutral and belligerent countries, enlisting the support of government officials, infiuential people and transportation authorities; of how every contact which the J.D.C. enjoyed with private relief agencies, governments and banks, railroads and food supply firms was utilized in one great effort to make sure that the Jews of Germany and Poland would celebrate ;Pas3over in the traditional manneri '
It is a story of suspense worthy of a novelist's effort. Ten days before the Seder the Jews of Germany were
still without Passover food, with the J.D.C. working against time; when finally expert and import permits had been granted in the supplying and receiving countries, and the freight cars—J.D.C. used fast freights because freight movements under wai conditions are slow—began rollii toward their destinations, loade with matzoth, goose fat, vegetabltj fat and canned kosher meat, not all of the difficulties had yet been overf come^ Two carloads of Passover supf plies were wrecked en route and ha<f to be taken in for repairs at a road shop on the Slovakian frontieif Various other delays were encountj ered on the way, but by wire: long distance telephone, by pei intervention of J.D.C. workers, from city to city to bespeak the sui| port of government officials, all dfl lays and difficulties were vanquishej and the shipments arrived on time to be distributed by the local relic committees to needy Jews.
Of course, the JJD.C. had obtaine preliminary approval for its acti\ ties. In German-occupied Polani for instance, the Goveirnor Gener approved the importation of over foods, and even stipulated they might be brought In freigl free and duty-free since the JJ>.f was a charitable organization.
I have given you this backgrp^ of J.D.C.'s operations to furnish yi with an idea of what these operatipj involve when I quote figures, su4 as 468,579 Jews in 344 localities Poland were supplied with Passo\ foods. ,
J.D.C.'s Passover relief efforts w^ not confined to the Jews of Gei and Poland. It should also be that in Rumania close to 300,000 pj pie were supplied by the J.D.C. matzoth, potatoes, oil, sugar, ' etc.
When you partake of the Passo| feast this year, therefore, think i the hundreds of thousands of 3 brethren on the other side who be doing likewise because of y^ generosity. Think of them, bscai] they think of you and look to'3 and to the JJ>.C. as the only nie^ of helping them to overcome a bit fate.
A Happy Passover to Our Majiy Jewish Friends and Customers
DIGK^S LIMITED:.
Men's Furnishings 399 W. Hastings St. Vancouver, B.C.
STORIES OF "JEWISH RITUAL" MURDERS BY NAZIS
STOCKHOLM (WNS)—Nazi authorities in Bohemia and Moravia utilized the approach of Passover to further their anti-Jewish campaign by reviving the now famous stories of "Jewish ritual murders," it was reported here.
Huge placards were posted on bill boards throughout Czechoslovakia reminding the population that Passover was approaching and warning Czech mothers to guard their children from Jews until the end of the Passover holidays.
The Nazi posters "informed" Czech mothers that Jews use the blood of Christian children in the preparation of matzoths. The placards appeared to have little effect on the Czechs since the ritual murder fable has become an annual feature of the Nazi propaganda machine, presented regularly two weeks before Passover.
■ Science pro v'es
Bread is Your Best and Cheapest Food
A
Happy Passover
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