B’nai Brith has fulfilled its final obligation to the Jewish War Orphans of Czechoslovakia, who have been supported and cared for by the Order since 1919, it was announced here today.
A check covering the support of the last few orphans who will soon reach a self-supporting age has been acknowledged by Dr. Josef Popper of Prague, president of B’nai Brith in Czechoslovakia.
B’nai Brith authorized the War Orphan program immediately after the war, and planned to care for hundreds of Jewish war orphans living in Poland, Germany, Bulgaria, Austria, Roumania, Jugo-Slavia, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. It was decided to have the American B’nai Brith lodges “adopt” a number of these orphans and support them until they should reach the age of fourteen. A special War Orphan Fund was created for this purpose.
Guardians, often members of European B’nai Brith lodges, were secured for the children, and efforts were made by the various Secretaries of the Order to establish some personal contacts between the orphans, their guardians in Europe, and the adopting lodges in the United States.
The Order supported fifty of these orphans in Czechoslovakia alone, and hundreds more in the other countries mentioned. In thanking the Order for the payment of its final check, Dr. Popper wrote as follows:
“I believe that at the conclusion of this important activity it may not be superfluous to point out that through this generous action of our American brethren, the solidarity of the Order was splendidly demonstrated. I may also add that through these remittances the purpose has been fully achieved and that fifty orphans whose very existence was threatened were saved, and the foundation was laid to make them useful members of society.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
