Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1919-10-17
Non-Sectarian Drive in October
to Raise 100000 for
War Sufferers.
CAMPAIGN TO LAST FOR WEEK.
Five Million People In One Section
of Poland at Point of Starvation.
, Children Have Little Chance
! to Live.


tober 20 to 2S. 1t is planned to raise
at least $1,O00,O00 in this State of the
S35.OOO,000 asked for in the nation.
Quotas for all counties have not been
decided upon, but those which have
been selected are: Essex, $403,000; ;
Bergen, $4,000 Hudson, $150,0o0; /;
Middlesex, $5O,000; Monmouth, $780,
600; Morris, $4,000; Passaic, $780,
600; Atlantic, $19,5O0; Sussex, $4,000,
and Union, 100000.
Felix Fuld of Newark Is Chairman of
the State Committee. The other men,
bers are Abe J. Diamond, Louis Bam-
berger, Lewis Straus, Nathan Bilder
and Louis Bamberger Of Newark, Alex
ander Kaufman of Elizabeth, Sigmund
Esiner of Red Bank, Harry NJ. Friend
of East Orange, Simon Gerson of Tren-
ton, Harry L. Schwarz of Dover, Abra-
Melniker of Jersey City, William New
corn of Plainfield, Harry Salz of Key
port and Charles Rosenberg of Hack
ensack
There are, it is estimated, about
1600O0,OO0 Jews In the world. OF all
of them, 20 per cent live in the war
swept countries Fully 100000 Jews
in Poland, Czechos1ovackia, former
Austria Hungary, Russia, Lithuania, ST.
IBERIA, Palestine, the Balkans and the
Orient are today totally dependent
upon outside aid for lifes necessities.
Of sniff In orc in
some parts of Europe, the story of
some of the hardships undergone by
the people of the River Bug, in Poland,
will suffice Little has been heard of
this vast territory since the war start
ed. The rivers eastern shore bounds
on one side the hungriest and most
stricken territory in the world today.
Five Million Near Starvation.
Five million people are at the point
of starvation, according to figures CIV
en- out by the American Jewish Relief
Committee and complied by the Ameri-
can Red Cross and the American Jew
ish Relief agents. A great number of
them are Jews. The war has left
100000 destitute and stricken Jews
in Eastern Europe, a number as great
as the entire population of New York
City. utterly helpless, in many cases
sick, and in every case hungry and de-
pendent.
East Of the River Bug these people
are living In devastated houses, in
stalls of old stables, on roofless plat
family to a platform in old freight
cars, in holes in the ground or under
the open sky They are weak from
many months of semi-starvation, for
they have gone five years without one
square meal They are still terror
stricken from the war. Their number
is being reduced every day by Sc
ries of the most terrible epidemics
that ever swept any section of the
world
Typhus, cholera and smallpox are all
raging in the territory east of the Riv-
er Bug. The first and most general
of these epidemics is carried simply
by body lice. At least one member of
every fifth or sixth family is stricken
with some form Of it, as is inevitable
among people clad in five-year-old rags,
people who have not had a bath with
soap or a change of clothing since the
beginning of the war. No estimate of
the actual numbers of those smitten
with typhus in Poland has as yet been
compiled, but it is probably greater
than in Siberia, where the American
Red Cross found 100000 cases.
If all the people in the territory east
of the Bug River could be fed properly
at once, disease would soon disappear,
doctors in the afflicted region say. II
they could replace the rags which
they have worn since the beginning of
the war with fresh clothing, the epi-
denies would cease to spread. Ii
their living places could be made hab-
liable and clean, 1t would no longer be
as it is today, the most desolate ex-
panse of land in the world. 1t is to-
ward this end that the two great or
ganizations, one of Gentiles and the
other of Jews, are working hand in
hand, differences of creed forgotten in
the great practical need they face.
Two Organizations at Work.
The Red Cross personnel has been
trebled in the last few weeks In this
district. American Jewish Relief
Agencies are feeding hundreds of chill
dren there In the desolate little towns
in this lost and forlorn land their
workers are constantly coming on chill
dren in school who have had nothing
to eat for two or three days, for the
tradition of education for their chill
dren, under no matter what condi-
tons, is one of the things that survive
longest among the Jews. The Joint
Distribution Committee of American
Jewish Relief Funds fed 100000 chill
dren in Poland last month at its chill
dren's relief bureaus. More than 4OO,-
900 youngsters in Warsaw alone got
II