The Gunzburgs by Lorraine de Meaux

Author:Lorraine de Meaux
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912600007
Publisher: Halban

The Committee for the Organisation of Aid to Jews Suffering from the Pogroms was set up in the Gunzburgs’ offices at 4 Zamyatin Lane. With David Feinberg as his main collaborator, Horace centralised the financing and organisation of aid: the delivery of food and clothing, the construction of housing for families without either a roof or income. A Ladies’ Committee was concerned more specifically with orphans. Abroad, the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden [Society for the Aid of German Jews], headed by Rabbi Paul Nathan, supervised the collection.8

In addition to emergency economic aid, Horace proposed to settle families from Kishinev on lands in Crimea in order to create an embryonic agricultural colony there that was intended to develop and offer a refuge for all those who were undergoing the same trials. Arguments fuelled by false information aimed to discredit the project: when he considered devoting some of the funds received from abroad to the purchase of land, Horace was suspected of seeking personal gain. A certain Cazès, sent by the Alliance Israélite, presented the project to Narcisse Leven in an unfavourable light:

You know that the Berlin assembly put 200,000 roubles at the disposal of the Kishinev committee for it to administer. But in the meantime the committee has received directly a more or less equivalent sum, so the funds approved in Berlin are available, and the committee here, wanting to use them in the interest of the people of Kishinev, is dreaming of a grandiose project, the purchase of a property of 7,000 desyatinas [7,649 hectares] that belongs to the Baron Gunzburg and is located not far from here. He wants to settle 500 families on it! I hope that, before implementing a project that is certainly very attractive but needs to be very carefully examined from all points of view, it will be submitted to the JCA.9

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