The only view of Hoovers football?
Szlomo Nadel remembered:
My favorite outdoor game was volleyball while other boys preferred football.
A real football was donated to us by the President of the United States, making the orphanage one of the only places in Warsaw where children could kick a real football. We, the children, wrote him letters of thanks and the Ambassador of the United States visited the orphanage to collect the letters in person.
Herbert Hoover’s historic visit to Warsaw, Poland in 1921 wasn’t his first visit, nor his last, but surely the most memorable and one of the most moving experiences of his life. At that time Herbert Hoover was chairman of the American Relief Administration (A.R.A.), which had begun to provide massive humanitarian aid to Eastern Europe, then recovering from the devastation of World War I.
Hoover took a particular interest in Poland when he learned of the serious shortages of food in the country and its effect on children. At Hoover’s initiative, shipments of condensed milk, flour, and wheat, totaling thousands of tons, began arriving in Poland in the spring of 1919. By the time of his visit in August, an extensive operation had been established through the cooperation of the A.R.A. and civic organizations, which established hundreds of kitchens that fed more than 500,000 children daily. Within a year the operation would feed as many as 1.5 million children and nursing mothers each day. The humanitarian aid for children was a precursor to massive shipments of clothing, shoes and medical supplies to establish inoculation centers against typhus and other diseases. Extensive technical assistance from American advisers also helped rebuild Poland’s railways and other industries. The Poles had much to be grateful for.
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| H. Hoover remembered Polish children also after devastation due to WWII. |
For search of documents use the link: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf758005bj/
