A publication which was a simple manifest issued by a group of pedestrian emigrants of Focsani in June 1900, on their way to America.

After many-many years of living together with the Romanian people, we, the group of fifty young Jewish workers named hereunder, are now leaving Romania, our adoptive homeland, undertaking ON FOOT the long, uncertain, dangerous, straitened journey to America.

We, the people without a homeland, we all loved you, Romania. We shared your suffering, rejoiced in your successes and pleasures, we were proud when you were praised and never ever hesitated to lend a hand when it was about your happiness. And in spite of all this we were despised and hated by many of your people, among who we, thousands of sons of a vagrant nation, lived and live.

And today, this unmotivated hatred on the one hand, which gave birth to innumerable difficulties weighing on our life, and on the other hand destitution, thrusting into us its merciless claws, force us to leave you and take up again the road of peregrination.

We are leaving you, but nothing is lost of the love we nurture for you, we feel no hatred, as hatred means the powerlessness to endure.

Farewell to you, Romania !

And you, our Jewish brothers, may you be called to live a freer live, have a happier existence, a better bread, there, in the promised Fatherland.

Hope, work, will and our faith shall strengthen us, help us to face the difficulties, and live to see our wish come true

Farewell to you, dear brothers ! May we meet at the earliest in ”Zion”, as a reward for all the good we have done for humanity.

NEXT YEAR IN ZION !

The Society of the Traveling Handicraftsmen of Focsani