“What, under these circumstances, is your duty and my duty toward these ten-times stricken, wretched human beings?” said Mr. Louir Marshall in a speech over the radio Tuesday night from station WGBS, appealing on behalf of the Emergency Committee on Jewish Refugees. “Are we to deafen our ears to the call of humanity? What is to be done to rescue those who are stretching forth their hands from a dozen European ports – Southampton and Cherbourg, Antwerp and Rotterdam, Bremen and Hamburg, Danzig and Libau, Revel and Riga, Constantinople and Marseilles? Are they to be left to perish and to go down to destruction? Are the refugees in Cuba to be permitted to succumb without a helping hand extended to them? The laws of the United States, whether we agree with the policy which enacted them or not, must and will be observed. Congress has the power to enact a joint resolution by which the sign manual of our Government, as exemplified in the visas which have been placed upon the passports held by the 8,000, may become effective. To give official recognition to these visas would save our country from just reproach. But if that cannot be brought about – and in any event it would take a long time do do so – then the duty is incumbent upon us Americans to save these children of God who have now been cast as derelicts upon inhospitable shores.
“With that thought in view, the Emergency Committee for the Relief of Jewish Refugees has been organized. Its plan is to bring about the admission of these afflicted sufferers into countries which will afford to them a chance to earn a livelihood under liberal laws, and where they may be helped pecuniarily during the initial days of their sojourn there until they secure employment. There are such countries to which these wanderers, if admitted, would eventually prove a blessing, as have their brethren who in the past have been admitted into the United States. This cannot, however, be accomplished by the committee unless it be provided with material means.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
