[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.
