100 years later, saving children again

It was 100 years ago when America heard the cries for help from Russia during the Great Famine of 1921. In August of that year Americans took action following an appeal from the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, asking for “bread and medicine” for starving children.

Herbert Hoover coordinated the relief effort, which soon uncovered the horrifying scope of the famine. Conflict and drought had placed 25 million people in danger of starvation across Russia’s Volga Valley and parts of Ukraine. Death was months away according to Hoover.

America mobilized quickly using relief supplies and staff from post WWI relief work in Europe. The very first delivery of food aid soon reached Russian children in Kazan.

Herbert Pulitzer of the New York World described the malnourished Russian children as “quiet, undemonstrative, stolid seemingly hopeless, unable to realize that the American Relief Administration had come to feed them through the terrible winter.”

One child did show emotion, crying when caught trying to sneak some of his food out for later consumption. He could not believe there would be more coming.

Pulitzer wrote “innocents, taught in the hard school of famine, they knew not whence their next meal was to come.”

Fortunately for Russian children and adults the American Relief Administration set up kitchens around the country to feed the starving. Congress passed legislation sending large amounts of corn to Russia. Charities like the National Catholic Welfare Council combined their work with the ARA and set up kitchens in the famine zone.

Millions of lives were saved in Russia from American food aid during the Great Famine.

Now 100 years later there are again cries for help to feed starving children. These pleas are coming from Madagascar, Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, D. R. Congo and other countries where people are in danger of starving to death. The UN World Food Program says 41 million people are at risk of starvation right now. But there is not enough funding for humanitarian aid in these suffering countries.

If we take action now, like we did 100 years ago during the Great Russian Famine, we can save lives in Madagascar and other hunger afflicted nations.

America’s response to the Great Russian Famine of 1921 fortified our spirit to fight hunger anywhere around the globe. We must continue that tradition to save lives from starvation.