This is an article published in the June 13, 1948 edition of the New York based Jewish newspaper The Forward. The article reports that the 12,000 members of the Out-of-Town Cloakmakers division of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) had contributed $30,000 in order to “adopt” 100 war orphans in France, Italy, Poland, and Belgium. The adopted children each received $300, which provided them with a full year’s care, shelter, and education. The original goal was to adopt fifty orphans, but the response to the voluntary donation was so great that they were able to adopt 100 children. The children, who were from various countries in Europe, were all Holocaust survivors who had lost their families in the war. The article highlights the tremendous generosity that came at an economic downturn for the cloak makers. The ILGWU was a major American trade union with many different divisions. The Out-of-Town Cloakmakers division comprised a group of garment workers who lived outside of New York City. The article explains why they were so enthusiastic about supporting the orphans:
"Embracing children of numerous European nationalities and faiths, the Cloak Out-Of-Town “adoptions” reflect the human solidarity and international understanding that prevails among the members of this union — as well as their sense of close kinship with the disinherited of all the world."
The article includes photographs of all 100 orphans along with their names and countries. There is also a photograph of the committee that organized the fundraising drive.
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International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) – The ILGWU was founded in 1900 by eleven Jewish male garment workers. The union initially represented a mostly Jewish, immigrant, male group of cloak makers. Women worked in the shirtwaist dress factories, and they too wanted to unionize. Eventually, the women joined the shirtwaist division of the ILGWU, and the percentage of women members rose to eight-five percent. After years of strikes by the shirtwaist workers and the tragic Triangle factory fire in 1911, women became influential in the union but still did not attain leadership roles. Besides working to improve wages and working conditions for its members, the union also encouraged women to participate in educational programs, become literate, and even earn university degrees. In the early years, the ILGWU had a large Jewish membership, but over time the membership shifted to Hispanic, Asian, and African-American women.
The Forward – The Forward (Forverts), the “largest Jewish newspaper in the world” for many years, was founded in 1897 in New York by a group of socialist immigrants from Eastern Europe. With the growing wave of Jewish immigrants to the United States in the first two decades of the twentieth century, The Forward gained growing popularity and its circulation grew rapidly. In 1915 it reached a circulation of 200,000, and in the 1920s and 1930s close to 300,000. Local editions of the newspapers were printed in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. At its peak, the newspaper had writers and contributors all over the Jewish world writing on Jewish and non-Jewish topics. After World War II, the newspaper saw a steady decline in its popularity, though it continued to be one of the most important and influential platforms of the American Jewish community. As of spring 2019, The Forward stopped being a printed newspaper, becoming instead a fully digital media outlet.
