POLISH JEW WAIFS

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1935, Page 7

POLISH JEW WAIFS

FAMILY OF CHILDREN RESCUED. SAVED FROM STARVATION. Eight small children rescued from probable death by disease and starvation in Poland arrived in the liner Rotorua at Wellington last week. The coming of these children, all of whom are Jewish orphans, has .revealed a strange story of sorrow and struggle and remarkable philanthropic endeavour, linking many of the Jewish race in Poland and Germany with a married couple who,came destitute to Wellington 39 years ago. They are Mr. and Mrs. M. Deckston, of 104 Rintoul Street.

Now owners of a large estate, it is Mr. and Mrs. Deckston, also Jews in exile, who have brought the children to this home. In the same way in the past their personal efforts have been the quiet means of bringing 45 to 50 other persons to. New Zealand,' Jews who were removed from a fate that probably meant at the best lives of poverty and oppression.

In their compassion for these members of their race and for the eight darkeyes young foreigners who arrived by the Rotorua—children who wifi begin their New Zealand life at a -public school —Mr. and Mrs. Deckston have been devoting to rescue work the latter part of their lives and much of their money. HARD LIFE IN POLAND. At her large home in Rintoul Street, after the children had been installed in the playroom of the semi-orphanage, Mrs. Deckston sketched out an impression of their lives up to the time thdy left Poland. Life for many of the Jews was hard in Poland, she said; it had been made worse by the arrival of families exiled from Germany. She herself had returned to Poland on a visit from New Zealand some years ago. She knew the conditions that applied there then, and her frequent correspondence with relatives and other Jews kept her in touch with the present grave difficulties. “So many Jewish waifs in Poland are starving,” she said. “Why have I brought them to Wellington? Where else is there for them to go? These children I have brought have been sleeping in doorways. . They have had no homes. “What else can, they do? There is no room for them in the homes and orphanages, and there is no scheme of relief wide enough to benefit more than a few of them. Many starve to death in the streets, or die of disease because of the way they have to live and. the kind of food they eat.” The Deckstons began making arrangements four years ago in connection with bringing the eight children to their home. Before they wbre taken away from Poland, Mrs. Deckston said, they had to be newly clothed! and fed. When asked if she thought they might have died if left without her assistance, she said, “Yes.” The children seemed happy in their new home on the first day of arrival, although perhaps a little bewildered by the new surroundings. They were mixing with two Jewish children who, with three others, had been brought to New Zealand by the Deckstons on a previous occasion.