focused exclusively on providing help in Warsaw. Other than small quantities
of medicine from TOZ, no help was obtained.
In the meantime, the long-awaited workers from labour camps returned [5],
sadly without seven young boys who had died. With the return of the workers,
a heavy burden was lifted from the Social Welfare Department. Although
medical attention immediately generated very high costs, given the bad health
of the newly arrived, but their return made it possible to resume the assistance
operation on a local scale. No help from the outside forced us this time
to obtain the funds among the local population.
The designated quota of potatoes had to be collected quickly due to the
relatively late time of year and ground-frost. We immediately started providing
potatoes for the refugees and the poor. This operation was not completed
due to the interrupted supply of potatoes, but we managed to supply all refugees
in Włoszczowa, Kurzelów, and other villages nearby and almost all the
local poor, assigning 100 kilos of potatoes per head, free of charge.
In November, AJDC sent us 1,000 kilos of wheat flour and a certain quantity
of Swiss donations, which were distributed among all the charges and
children. All this, however, was of little help to the refugees and the poor,
whose poverty was steadily worsening. Due to the threat of an outbreak of
typhoid fever, in November and December 1940 vaccination was undertaken
and more than 2,000 people were vaccinated free of charge. Cramped housing
and lack of fuel affects the hygiene that we still struggle to maintain.
The Committee issued special leaflets promoting cleanliness, and put them in
shops and doors of houses; furthermore, several thousand leaflets were distributed, instructing how to prevent and treat infectious diseases.
cClothes were distributed among 550 people, who received more than
1,300 articles of clothing, about 400 of which were collected in the town.
The year of work of the Committee for Refugees and the Poor at the
Judenrat, a year of hard and intensive work, was marked mostly by the generous
involvement of all employees and the local population, whose contribution
to the financing of all social operations was tremendous. If the aid we
provided was not what we wanted to offer, if it was not sufficient in our opinion
and in the opinion of those using it, it was not our fault. The obstacle was
the lack of adequate funding, which stalled many a plan.
Richer with this year’s experiences, in the new year we returned to work
under even more severe conditions, with the same motto:
