In the American Press – 80 Years Ago

A study of the American Yiddish press from eighty years ago reveals a tremendous awakening and a tremendous change in public opinion, which became an active part of the World War and ceased to be merely content with interest and expressions of sorrow and concern.

The headlines of the end of Tevet 5705 and the beginning of Shvat are naturally occupied with the advance of the Allied forces and the areas occupied by the Red Army. The horror is beginning to be revealed and the shock is evident in the articles, news segments, and opinion columns. The first week of Shvat 5705 brought with it the tragic news. These were no longer rumours, guesses, distant information, nor wild speculation. These were testimonies, photographs, verified information, reality as it was, and things were difficult to digest. At that time, the Hitlerite extermination machine was still operating in full force. The death marches were in full swing, and mass killings carried out by desperate Germans were destroying ghettos and camps, entire populations.

The newspaper clippings collected and translated by Ganzach Kiddush Hashem are a chilling reminder of those twilight days, when perhaps a a few remaining people could still be saved, but for the six million it was already too late.

During the same period, 600,000 Jews from the United States fought in Europe, of which 400,000 of whom were from New York. The newspaper Forverts, at the end of Tevet 5705, exactly eighty years ago, reported the enormous number of Jewish fighters on the battlefields of Europe in a long article under the title “15 Families and Their 98 Children on the Battlefield.”

The newspaper says that of the 5,200,000 American Jews, over ten percent were currently fighting in Europe. This compares to about 400,000 Jews who fought in the US Army in World War I.

Among the fighters, according to the newspaper, there are sometimes seven brothers from the same family, and it mentions the famous story of Mrs. Jacobson, an American Jew, mother of seven sons and a daughter, six of whose sons fought in World War I on the battlefield in Europe, one of whom fell in battle, one of whom was wounded, and on the day the news arrived, her fifteen-year-old son disappeared and his whereabouts were unknown.

Only at the end of the war, one Shabbat night, did the boy show up at his house and say that he had returned from serving in the American Army. He had “raised” his age and gone out with all his heart to fight for his brother and for America.

Now, the newspaper concludes, there are many such families scattered across the battlefields of Europe.

In the newspaper Der Tog, the writer H. Livik expresses shock and astonishment upon reading Yankel Wernicks’ diary “A Year in Treblinka.”

Also, during this period, sections of people searching for relatives began to appear regularly in the Jewish press.

Below are cartoons from American Yiddish newspapers from eighty years ago.

One cartoon screams “Jews can still be saved,” underneath a drawing of Jews in the camps

One cartoon depicts the arrow – in the shape of a rifle – thrust into the heart of every Jewish mother in the United States whose children are fighting and whose souls are consumed with worry