LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Thoughts on synagogue shooting

Posted

To the editor:

It is interesting that the recent mass killing of Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue was motivated in part by the killer’s hatred of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

This organization was founded in 1881 to assist Russian Jews in emigrating to America.

One of those emigrants was my wife’s mother. While still a teenager, she also was an HIAS volunteer who chaperoned a group of Russian Jewish youngsters to America on a steamer from Hamburg, Germany, to New York, which was once the usual route for travel to America from Russia.

True to its Jewish heritage of compassion for the oppressed, HIAS now aids mostly non-Jewish immigrants to America.

Alan Saks

Alan Saks,

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