"Fifty Thousand Pesos Already Collected for the War Victims"

As World War II made international communication more difficult, Jewish communities across the world mostly lost contact with Jews in areas controlled by Nazi Germany and its allies. This affected Jewish newspapers' reporting on the war and the persecution and murder of European Jews. These topics presented the editors of Jewish publications with a new urgency, but the need to report about the events in Europe could not be met by the usual networks of news agencies and correspondents. The reports about anti-Jewish Nazi atrocities that reached the outside world were often impossible to confirm and difficult to believe.

Nevertheless, all Jewish newspapers outside of German-controlled areas in Europe reported and commented on what has become known as the Holocaust. This is true for newspapers across geographical and political divides. This news was reported in the official Soviet Jewish journal, Jewish newspapers in democratic countries like the United States or the United Kingdom, and Jewish newspapers in Latin America or Palestine. In their reports and comments, each journal reflected the ideological positions of its editors or publishing organization. From Zionists to assimilationists, the spectrum of Jewish newspapers outside German-dominated territories reflects the diversity of Jewish responses to the ongoing persecution and genocide in Europe.¹

Over the years, Jewish communities around the world had read about the marginalization and impoverishment of the Jewish community in Germany, the trials of emigration and exile, and the events of the war. Many communities organized humanitarian actions on behalf of the battered European Jews. In the first months of the war—in the lull between the German victory in Poland and the invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940—the Mexican Jewish community embarked on a nationwide campaign to help "war victims in Europe." The community sent financial aid through the premier international Jewish humanitarian organization known as the Joint.

Di shtime ("The Voice"), or, in Spanish, La voz israelita de México ("The Jewish Voice of Mexico") was one of the leading Mexican Yiddish-language newspapers. In the featured issue, a report focuses on the community's effort to collect financial aid on behalf of the Jews in Europe.²

For an overview of the press coverage of the Holocaust, see Robert Moses Shapiro, ed., Why Didn't the Press Shout? American & International Journalism during the Holocaust (Jersey City, NJ: Yeshiva University Press in association with KTAV, 2003). See also Laurel Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

For an introduction to the history of Jews in Mexico, see Adina Cimet, Ashkenazi Jews in Mexico: Ideologies in the Structuring of a Community (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), and Daniela Gleizer, Unwelcome Exiles: Mexico and the Jewish Refugees from Nazism, 1933-1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2014).

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the New York-based Jewish relief agency.

The largest (Ashkenazic) synagogue in Mexico, which also served as an educational institution, publishing house, and aid society. Like other communities in Eastern Europe and around the world, it took its name from the from the Biblical promise, re-articulated in Isaiah 11:12 to gather the "dispersed of Israel." In the case of Jewish life in Mexico, it would also have been a clear reference to the work of Rabbi Israel Meir HaKohen (the "Chofetz Chaim," 1839-1933), whose 1893 scholarly book "Nidkhe Yisroel" guided immigrants in maintaining their faith.

50 Thousand Pesos Already Collected for War Victims

Mexican Jews Respond Warmly with Help for Victims in Europe

The committee that is conducting the campaign for Jewish war victims is working very actively, despite the fact that the entire workload fell on only some of the members. Over the course of this week, another 10 thousand pesos were collected, and this was from around thirty people.

Up to fifty thousand pesos have already been gathered—and hundreds and hundreds of Jews who have not yet been approached have yet to contribute.

The committee will do all that is possible to ensure that no Jew is left out of the campaign—but it is also necessary for the members of the committee who are "behind the times" to become actively involved, and community leaders wishing to collaborate should also step forward. All who are willing are requested to come to the planning meeting on Monday evening and volunteer to take on some of the work because the campaign must be completed in the next couple of weeks.

As was already announced, 5,000 dollars were sent off to "Joint"¹ (check No. 2476 of the Manufacturers' Trust Co.) and the executive has been authorized to send off another check in the coming days from the money that has already been collected. In this way, the contributions of Mexican Jews will reach the place where all of our hearts already lie.

The campaign in the provinces

In Monterrey, thanks to the cooperation of Mr. Maizel and the local community leaders, around 4,000 pesos have been collected, and this money should reach the Committee in the next couple of days. The Jews in Torreón have collected over 3,000 pesos, as was communicated in a letter to the Committee.

Avrom Gerzon, a prominent community leader and board member of Nidkhe Yisroel,² is currently in Veracruz and will oversee the campaign there. Tomorrow, Sunday, the Messrs. A. Nones, Finance Secretary, and M. Rubenstein, the editor of Di Shtime, will visit Puebla with the same goal.

All Jews from both the city and provinces are called upon to fulfill their obligation with respect to our tormented, suffering brothers, during this great catastrophe of our people, and hurry with assistance. Mexican Jews will fulfill their duty!

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