Our New York Letter

The Chicago Chronicle, September 12, 1924

His Serene Highness, Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya, Regent of Hungary, willed, on the 8th day of February, to confer upon Felix M. Warburg, the Cross of the Hungarian Red Cross Decoration. On August 29th, Louis Alexy, Hungarian Acting Consul-General in New York, presented the Insignia and Statutes of the decoration to the President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

The President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, decorated by Admiral Horthy?! Were the news to be made known in Hungary, the Hungarian Jews would read it with amazement.

Admiral Horthy, since the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, is quite a familiar name, but it has an unharmonious sound to Jewish ears. The amazement would be a natural one. The protector of the “awakening Magyars,” the head of a government which has to its “credit” one of the most devitalizing policies with regard to the Jewish population of Hungary, an element that was state-building and responsible for a large portion of native Hungarian commerce, industry and culture, bestowing honors upon one of the greatest Americans and Jews, Felix M. Warburg, the protector of all needy victims of the same government and many others.

Hungary has recently obtained a loan the International Monetary Market. Felix M. Warburg is the head of Kuhn, Loeb & Company. Is there any connection? Those who look for the motive of every action would form such a suspicion. Some of us are inclined to sense politics in any government will or decision. However, the decoration was granted, not [to] Felix M. Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb & Company, but to Felix M. Warburg, President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Has the government of the “awakening Magyars” awakened to the great benefactory role which the American Joint Distribution Committee has played in all the war-stricken and devastated countries where Jews were victimized by the resurrected nations and most of all Hungary? Nothing of the kind.

American public opinion, including American Jewish public opinion, knows very little of a great action undertaken by many American organizations, including the Joint Distribution Committee, in favor of a great number of war prisoners. At the head of this great humanitarian work stood Felix M. Warburg. It is for that reason that his Serene Highness deemed it fitting to bestow distinction upon the President of the Joint Distribution Committee.

It’s a pity that so little is known of that work. I believe that a few details ought to be told now.

Those who had occasion to find themselves in the fatal years of 1914 and 1915 on the fertile plains along the Rivers Prut and Vistula, witnessing the struggle of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies, knew how great was the number of Austro-Hungarian soldiers who were “taken” prisoners. These prisoners, fortunate in the eyes of their [dead] comrades, were hurriedly shipped off into the distant and snowy plains of Siberia. Thousands were their number. The collapse of the Russian Empire, followed by the ruin of the Central Powers, the signature of the Versailles Treaty and the chaos in Russia, sealed the fate of those war prisoners. The spoils of the Russian army were abandoned in the snows of Siberia, with no one to take care of them and no one to repatriate them, doomed to death through starvation and typhus.

A portion of these prisoners were privileged. They belonged to the same Austro-Hungarian Army, but they were Czechs and the allied governments have provided means of transportation for their return to their homes or again to the front of battle. Different, however, was the lot of the nationals of Turkey, Austria-Hungary and others whose governments were unable to either take care of them at their place of exile or bring them home to their families. Thousands perished.

Echoes of this misery reached America. Fifteen American organizations with the American Red Cross and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee formed a Siberian Repatriation War Fund. This fund assumed the task of rescuing these prisoners and fulfilling the obligation which rested upon their bankrupt governments. Besides the American Red Cross, which contributed to that fund $500,000, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee headed the list of contributors with its $25,000.

Felix M. Warburg was elected Chairman of the fund and, together with Lewis L. Strauss and Capt. Rosenbluth in Siberia, performed the major portion of that tremendous task. The main beneficiaries of this American generosity were Hungarians. Not less than 8,000 Hungarian war prisoners were repatriated on a route encircling almost the globe at a cost of nearly $1,000,000, after prolonged negotiations with the various governments, with almost unbelievable efforts and difficulties.

“We have sent an ambassador of the best American ideals into Europe in the person of each of the men whom we have been privileged to help and we have left an ineradicable testimonial of American Good Faith in the troubled Far East that will be more enduring than a thousand diplomatic declarations of our honest intentions,” said Felix M. Warburg in speaking of this work.

In the person of Felix M. Warburg both American and Jewish generosity was recognized and honored by the Hungarian government.

Will this marvelous humanitarian work remain long in the memory of the “awakening Magyars”?