There are men in the city of London engaged in large businesses, and employing hundreds of Christian hands in manufactures not previously carried on in England, and these men came from Russia and Poland poor persecuted Jews, with but a few shillings in the world to call their own. If I were to make a list of the big Jewish manufacturers and tradesmen, and Jewish men of learning and of science, who came to this country poor alien immigrants, the revelation would be an astounding one.
But we must not stay now to look back or to look forward. The people to whose stories we are listening to-day have left the past behind them, and their future is an unknown quantity. The present is to them a problem which shuts out all other considerations.
Here is a refugee who fled from a city of massacre. He had been wounded in a riot at Ekaterinoslav. During the riot his brother disappeared, and it was supposed that he had been killed and quietly buried by the authorities.
When this man gives his name it is a peculiar one. A member of the committee remembers that some time previously a man with a similar name had come to the Shelter from Russia, and had been sent to America. The books are referred to, and a full description of the man is found.
It is the brother who was supposed to be dead. The poor applicant is overjoyed. He receives his ticket for America, and goes from the room almost hysterical with joy. He is going across the seas to find in the new land the brother whom he had mourned as dead.
A young woman comes before the committee with tears in her eyes. She has her ticket for the Argentine. What does she want?
She tells a pathetic little story. Five years ago her only sister left Russia and came to London. She sent her address to her relatives. The girl who is now before the committee has accompanied her husband, a reservist. When she left home she took her sister's last letter with the address on it and put it with her few belongings. She has lost the letter. She has been all day tramping about trying to find anyone who can tell her where her sister is living. To-morrow she will have to leave London for the Argentine. She may be quite close to her sister at this very moment—the sister she loves—but she must go away to-morrow, and in all human probability they will never meet again.
What can be done? Nothing. To find a certain woman in London, who left Russia five years ago, is beyond the power of the committee. They can only offer the weeping girl their sympathy.
Here is a boy of fourteen—a sturdy little fellow. He steps up boldly to the table. Where are his parents? He has none. His father and mother were killed in the massacre of Kischineff. He has obtained enough money of friends and sympathizers in Kischineff to make his way to England. He has come alone from Kischineff to London, and he asks the committee to help him. The boy's story is a pitiful one. The committee investigate his case, and it is decided to send the lonely little voyager to the Jewish Orphanage at Jerusalem.