[A.
Destruction of the Jewish existence in Poland
1929-1939]
[5.12. JDC work for Jewish children and
schools in anti-Semitic Poland]
[Work for children
makes JDC popular - funds of JDC for children
organization CENTOS and and the health organization
TOZ]
The question as
to whether work for children was relief work exercised
some of the minds at the JDC offices. To Kahn, at any
rate, it was quite obvious that this was constructive
work of the highest order, and he insisted on devoting
roughly one-third of his Polish budgets to the support
of various types of activities for children. This, of
course, was in line with the traditional Jewish approach
to social work generally and made JDC popular among the
Jewish masses in Eastern Europe. A large percentage of
these budgets went to two organizations that dealt
mainly with children: CENTOS and TOZ.
[Supplement: At the other hand the Jewish organizations
made themselves unpopular at the "Christian" population
because "Christian" children received no help].
[Figures of Jewish
children programs in anti-Semitic Poland]
The number of children requiring the attention of
CENTOS, the child care agency, grew considerably in the
1930s. Only a small number of them could be accepted
into institutions providing full-time care; these were
mostly either orphans or half orphans. In 1937 there
were 8,047 of these youngsters. However, the total
number of children that CENTOS looked after, partly or
wholly, grew from 15,102 in 1933 to 32,066 in 1937.
These included youths in vocational training
institutions (they were included as JDC institutions in
the figures for vocational training given above) and
summer camps.
[JDC cooperation with
children organization CENTOS]
JDC actually supplied about 12-13 % of CENTOS's budget,
in line with its policy of helping others to help
themselves. But these percentages were very important
for the men who ran CENTOS. They could then go to the
Polish government and municipalities and point to
American help (in foreign exchange) as a weighty
argument in their demand for Polish contributions. These
contributions added another 17 % to their budget, and
the rest was largely covered by membership
contributions. This was a unique system of organization
whereby CENTOS had over 45,000 registered members who
owned, and theoretically ran, the organization and its
institutions. They were, of course, recruited from the
wealthier segments of the Jewish population, and there
too, the fact that CENTOS had been set up by JDC and
continued to enjoy its support was adduced as an
argument in collection drives. (p.204)
[The work of TOZ with
the poor Jewish families - TOZ medical facilities]
A similar structure characterized TOZ, though TOZ was
smaller and weaker than CENTOS. The task of TOZ was not
limited to children; it had to look after the health of
the poorer sections of the Jewish population, young and
old. It had only 11,191 members in 1937, and its budget
was 1.4 million zloty, or less than half of the 3
million zloty budget of CENTOS. But it, too, spread its
142 institutions all over Poland, and tried to introduce
modern hygienic methods into slums and poverty-stricken
townships and villages.
One of its main achievement was the organization of
lectures by various types of experts. Its 46 stations
for mothers and babies gave valuable advice at very
little cost to large number of women who could not
afford to visit doctors. It had six X-ray installations
and 29 dental stations, some of them mobile. It ran
three Jewish hospitals, 33 ambulatory clinics, and 12
anti-TB dispensaries in 1938.
With regard to TOZ, JDC help was relatively larger than
with CENTOS and amounted to 28 % of the TOZ budget. But
Polish governmental and municipal help amounted to only
9.4 %, and the percentage of the budget covered by local
Jewish contributions was about the same as for CENTOS.
JDC supervised closely the expenditures and general
activities in both cases through its Warsaw office.
[JDC network for
children summer camps]
One of the most important types of work with children
encouraged by JDC was the network of summer camps. The
reasoning behind this network was that children who
suffered privations throughout the year should spend the
summer in healthful surroundings, with adequate medical
attention and with plenty to eat, (p.205)
Table 14: Summer
Camps in Poland
|
Year
|
No. of camps
|
No. of children
|
| xxxxxxxx1935xxxxxxxx |
222 |
37,286xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
|
| xxxxxxxx1936xxxxxxxx |
428 |
58,661xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
| xxxxxxxx1938xxxxxxxx |
636 |
102,615xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
(p.205)
relatively speaking. In 1934 some 35,000 Jewish children
went to summer camps supported by JDC-subsidized
institutions. These included not only CENTOS and TOZ,
but also the various Jewish school networks.
Direct participation of JDC in these camps ranged from
10 % of the budget in 1936 to 7.2 % in 1938; but apart
from JDC's direct participation, the various
organizations that ran the colonies were themselves
JDC-controlled or -subsidized or both, and the expenses
of these camps were part of their regular budgets.
The problem of starving children could not, of course,
be solved by a few weeks of summer vacation.
[If also "Christian" children get summer camps in Polend
is not mentioned. If not there is a big subliminal base
for envy of the "Christian" population].
[Poverty of Jewish
children in Poland]
Very large numbers of Jewish children went to school in
the mornings without breakfast. The choice was whether
to give them something to eat at school or let them go
hungry. There was no question as to the response from
JDC, despite its opposition in principle to direct
relief. In the face of the deteriorating Polish
situation and the approach of war in Europe, some JDC
officials in New York asked whether some of these
expenses could be cut; Kahn lost his usual patience and
retorted: "Try to be hard and do not give any money for
feeding and clothing and see what will happen. I hear so
much about your wanting to be drastic - try it!"
(End note 64: 44-21, Kahn's letter, 7/25/39 [25 July
1939])
They did not [cut].
[1940-1943 the ghettos would cut, under the eyes of the
Polish Catholic - extremely anti-Semitic - population.
Many Jewish children have survived on farms with helping
on farms, and later were defined as "Christians" to hold
them there for further help on the Polish farm, because
the men were killed in the war...]
The problem of Jewish children in Poland was very
closely bound up with the question of Jewish culture and
religion. JDC's main task was to try to save the
economic and social structure of European Jewry; but it
could not, and did not want to, close its eyes to
cultural and educational problems. Cyrus Adler, head of
the American Jewish Committee, served as chairman of
JDC's Cultural and Religious Committee. In 1935 he
states: "Hard as the situation is, if no effort is made
to save the minds and the soul of the Jewish people,
there will not be any Jewish people left to save."
(End note 65: Executive Committee, 3/26/35 [26 March
1935])
There was some truth in that statement, though the
danger was less one of immediate cultural assimilation
than of physical, economic, and ultimate cultural
degradation and decline. As it turned out, the spirit of
the Jewish people bore up remarkably well in the face of
the most horrendous obstacles. (p.206)
[Orthodox Jewish
families get no state schools for their Jewish
children]
The first and most urgent problem was that of schooling.
Polish schools were making it increasingly difficult for
observant Jewish children to attend classes. In the
1930s the special Polish schools where Jewish children
were excused from writing on Shabbat began to close
down. The same fate awaited Jewish private schools.
The pretexts were usually of a purely formal nature,
that is, nonobservance of regulations regarding the size
of rooms, facilities, and the like that were ignored as
far as the Polish schools themselves were concerned.
[Jewish schools have no
money for renovations - Kahn's warnings that closed
Jewish schools will never reopen]
Then there were Jewish schools that had to be renovated
for reasons other than the pressure by Polish
authorities; these schools, which depended largely on
voluntary contributions, were rarely in a position to
build or renovate without financial aid.
In 1934 Kahn was warning New York that "the schools,
once closed, will never be allowed to reopen" by the
Poles. "The institutions, fallen to pieces and
deteriorated considerably, will cost very much more to
restore if they are allowed to go to pieces altogether."
(End note 66: R17, letter by Kahn, 11/3/34 [3 November
1934])
In the early 1930s Kahn was experiencing great
difficulties in getting allocations for physical
facilities for Jewish schools, but the situation eased
somewhat later on as a result of increased funds. It was
then that he stated his view that schools were as
productive as industry and indicated his opposition to
those in New York who wanted to increase "productive"
investment at the expense of schools.
[Jewish schools in
anti-Semitic Poland: Figures]
The Polish Jewish school structure was itself a model of
confusion. At the end of 1935 a total of 523,852
children were registered in various types of
institutions, government and private, from the primary
grades to the age of 18. Of these, 343,671 studied in
Polish schools, including those where certain allowances
were made for Shabbat observance. This accounted for
about 2/3 of the Jewish children;
the rest, 180,181 children, studied at Jewish
institutions of different kinds. The largest of these
were the religious primary schools, traditional
chadarim, where
Jewish law and religious observances were the main
studies. These schools were said to have close to 50,000
pupils.
Some 35,585 girls studied in specially set up, rather
primitive religious institutions that paralleled (p.207)
the
chadarim.
About 16,000 boys of high school age studied at various
types of
yeshivoth
(higher institutions of traditional learning); thus over
100,000 children attended 963 religious educational
institutions.
Of the rest, the most important were the Tarbuth
schools, where most of the subjects were taught in
Hebrew rather than Polish or Yiddish, though both the
latter languages were also taught. There the stress was
on modern secular schooling, with a careful balance of
the sciences, humanities, and sports. Needless to say,
this network of schools was under Zionist influence
[because Hebrew was foreseen for Palestine and Yiddish
should be exterminated and not been spoken in
Palestine]. A total of 44,780 children studied in its
269 institutions. These included 9 secondary schools,
from which much of the young Zionist leadership between
the two world wars in Poland came.
Also Zionist, modern, and religious were the 299 schools
of the
Yavneh
group, which had 15,923 pupils. Yavneh was under the
influence of religious Zionist parties.
A special network of Yiddish schools (167 primary and 2
secondary) was organized by circles close to the Bund;
this network was called
Cisho. A total of 16,486 children
studied in those schools; the trend was left-wing,
Yiddishist, and anti-Zionist [because they thought Jews
should not leave their home countries].
There was also a small network of 16 schools with 2,343
children (Szulkult), which tried to combine Yiddish with
Hebrew [a multi-cultural schooling system].
That was the complete picture of Jewish elementary and
secondary schooling in Poland.
(End note 67: All the figures are taken from a detailed
report by Neustadt, dated 5/10/36 [10 May 1936]: Jewish
Private and Public Instruction in Poland; 46-reports)
To this one must add the 167
yeshivoth for young adults, with their
31,735 pupils, who formed the backbone of traditionalist
Jewry in Poland.
JDC paid special attention to the yeshivoth, mainly
because Adler saw in them a certain guarantee for Jewish
existence in Europe, and also because the many Orthodox
supporters of JDC had the right to expect financial aid
for the yeshivoth. Besides the yeshivoth, JDC also
supported the Jewish Scientific Institute (YIVO), which
had its main center in Vilna. In 1939 a JDC leader said
of YIVO that its achievements made "the Hebrew
University [in Tel Aviv?] look childish in
accomplishment".
(End note 68: 44-21, Committee on Poland, 4/11/39 [11
April 1939])
This may have been somewhat exaggerated, but there was
no doubt that YIVO was an institution of quality and had
a right to expect JDC help. (p.208)
[JDC help for the
Jewish schools in anti-Semitic Poland]
JDC had the choice of supporting all the different
trends in Jewish education or none. The schools
represented various types of political thinking no less
than various trends in education, and JDC could not
appear to be partisan to any particular trend. Subsidies
therefore went to all types of schools; but the
principle of supporting only capital investments, not
current budgets, was carefully observed. This was
sometimes rather liberally interpreted - for example,
when it came to various types of teaching aids; but
generally speaking JDC support went toward construction,
repairs, acquisition of essential school equipment, and
the like.
From 1933 to 1939 JDC school expenditures trebled,
(End note 69: From $ 44,000 to $ 121,000)
and while the total sums were quite small, a great deal
was done with them. As in other cases, JDC made its
support conditional on the raising of local funds.
Without JDC contributions these funds would never have
materialized. With them, many schools in Poland either
were built or were salvaged for the use of thousands of
pupils.
[Late 1930s: The last
years of Jewish schools in Poland]
Yet despite all these efforts Jewish schools continued
to shut down all over Poland in the late 1930s. In the
Cisho network alone, 63 schools with 8,400 pupils were
closed down by the Polish government between the two
world wars, under a variety of pretexts. Kahn suspected
that the Poles would attack the Tarbuth network as well.
The same pattern that we observed in other areas was
repeated here: the funds that JDC had at its disposal in
Poland simply did not allow for any radical cure of the
massive illness the Jewish economic and social structure
was suffering from. Without JDC help, it must be
presumed, the situation would have been considerably
worse; with it, it was bad enough.
