[B.
Destruction of the Jewish existence in Romania
1929-1939]
[5.14. Joint Distribution Committee supports
children in Romania - famine in Bessarabia 1935]
Help to children was especially important in the
Máramarossziget area [in the North] and in northern
Transylvania generally, where just about the only hope for
the future seemed to be to save the children from the
effects of starvation. 1,300 children were fed in that
area in 1933; this grew to 5,000 by 1935. As for the
summer camps, about 30% of their budgets were covered by
JDC, the principle being - as in Poland - that the larger
proportion of the funds had to be found locally.
[JDC work in Cluj
(Klausenburg) - support for children]
In Cluj (Klausenburg), the capital of Transylvania, there
was a very effective Jewish child care society, which
expanded its work in the 1930s and became a source of
pride for JDC. By 1937 it not only ran eighteen recreation
and health centers for children, but it also went into
vocational training and convinced the ultra-Orthodox
groups to open training centers where part of the time was
devoted to traditional yeshivah studies and part to
carpentry and other pursuits. It also ran four homes for
apprentices and permanently supplemented the feeding of
over 1,000 children. The Cluj group received about
one-sixth of its budget from JDC and managed to find the
rest locally.
(End note 71: R62; the budget for 1937 was 3,767,565 lei;
JDC participation in this came to 638,382 lei)
The importance of this work stood out against the general
backwardness of the country: in 1940, infant mortality in
Romania was 188 per 1000, higher than that in India in the
same year.
(End note 72: The Era of Violence; In:
The New Cambridge Modern
History, 12:49)
Among Jews it was considerably lower.
The summer camp program was also concentrated largely in
(p.211)
Table 15: JDC
Allocations in Romania (in $)
|
Year
|
Total amount allocated
|
Amount allocated for children
|
Percentage of total
|
1933
|
16,650
|
|
|
1936
|
51,554
|
18,350
|
36.6
|
1937
|
79,304
|
24,773
|
31.3
|
1938
|
83,430
|
|
|
Transylvania. The numbers were fairly constant -
about 3-4,000 children (3,700 in 1937) were given the
opportunity to spend their summers in about 30 camps, to
whose budget JDC contributed a third.
[JDC work in Bessarabia:
Coping of a famine 1935 - medical care]
An especially serious situation developed in Bessarabia,
which had a large Jewish peasant population. There was a
crop failure in 1935. In December of that year a JDC press
release reported "serious famine conditions" which
"threaten half of the Jewish population of Bessarabia and
part of the population of Moldavia". About 30,000 Jews
were reported to be on the verge of starvation. Kahn
authorized the expenditure of $ 5,000 to start a feeding
program. This sum was soon spent, and additional sums had
to be sent to Bessarabia throughout the spring of 1936.
Medical aid also became necessary because of the spread of
skin diseases, and clothes were collected because children
had only rags to wear.
(End note 73:
-- Executive Committee, 12/20/35 [20 December 1935];
-- R15, Report and Bulletin, January and April 1936;
-- Jewish Chronicle, 1/3/36 [3 January 1936])
[Bessarabia: Help for
famine affected Jews provokes anti-Semitism in the
German population]
Paradoxically, the plight of the Jews increased rather
than diminished the spread of anti-Semitism, because a
"large part of the hunger-stricken area (was) inhabited by
German colonists who (were) all under Nazi influence."
(End note 74: Kahn to Hyman, 1/15/36 [15 January 1936],
Gen. & Emerg. Romania, 1933-37)
Peasant unrest became one of the major influences that
brought about the rise of the Right under Goga.
