These letters are from the Herbert Hoover Subject Collection of the Hoover Institution Archives. They were sent to Herbert Hoover by children of Bielsk during the interwar period. Hoover was appointed by then President Woodrow Wilson to head the American Relief Administration (ARA), a special organization that used $100 million appropriated by Congress after the end of World War I. The ARA became the major source of food for 300 million people in 21 countries in Europe and the Middle East. The ARA officially ended on June 30, 1919, but it was evident to Herbert Hoover that the children would still suffer, so he devised the ARA European Children's Fund as a private charitable organization. It fed the children through the summer of 1921. The European Children's Fund was supported by American donations and by sale of Food Draft Packets. This was the origin of CARE packs. Hoover would later become President in 1929. During his lifetime Mr. Hoover will help supply 57 countires with food. An article in the Hoover Digest contains other images and a history of the letters.
It appears that the letters are completely hand
drawn. Two of the letters are dated 1921. The other two are
undated. Each letter consists of two pages. The first page is the
letter itself. The second page is a list of signatures of children
in Bielsk along with a transcribed list of names at the bottom of
the page. The Yiddish names on the signature pages are numbered
and noted in the list of transcribed names. The letters were
written with many mistakes in syntax and used old Polish form.
Please email the coordinator
with any suggested corrections or refinements to the translations.
A chapter titled "Community Life in Bielsk," in the
Bielsk Podlaski yizkor book, Bielsk-Podliask; Book in the Holy
Memory of the Bielsk Podliask Jews Whose Lives Were Taken During
the Holocaust Between 1939 and 1944, contains a history
of a Jewish children's kitchen and orphanage along with two
photos. The description may explain why the letters to Herbert
Hoover refer to the "the Second Jewish Kitchen in Bielsk." Click this link and scroll down to page 356.
Special thanks to: Heather Wagner at the Hoover Institution Archives for providing the letters; Tomasz Wisniewski for translating the letters from Polish to English; Mindy Crystel Gross for providing the translations of the Yiddish names; and to Judy Baston for bringing the existence of these letters to my attention.
| Letter from The Children of the Second Jewish Kitchen in Bielsk, circa 1921. |  |
Letter from The Children of the Second Jewish Kitchen in Bielsk, dated 1921. |  |
| Letter from The Children of the Jewish Prevenotory (Orphanage?) no 4 in Bielsk, circa 1921. |  |
Letter from the Jewish children of Siemiatycze, province Bielsk, Grodno Land, Kitchen no. 4. Dated July 4, 1921. |  |
Updated July 12, 2023
Copyright © 2014 Andrew Blumberg
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