Herr Oscar Wassermann, Director of the Deutsche Bank and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Keren Hayesod, opened here to-day a joint conference of the German section of the Jewish Agency and of the Keren Hayesod, attended by 150 prominent men in German Jewry, among them Consul-General Eugen Landau, Vice-President of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden; Dr. Bernhard Kahn, European Director of the Joint Distribution Committee; Dr. Sobernheim; Herr Kurt Blumenfeld, President of the German Zionist Federation; Herr Bruno Asch; Rabbi Dr. Leo Baeck, President of the German B’nai B’rith; Dr. Georg Bernhard, former editor-in-chief of the “Vossische Zeitung”; and Dr. Schocken.
A telegram of greetings was sent by the Conference to Mr. Felix M. Warburg in New York.
Herr Wassermann, after outlining the present financial and political situation of the Jewish Agency, expressed the hope that the co-operation between the two halves of the Jewish Agency, Zionist and non-Zionist, would continue without disturbance. Any change in the respective strengths of the component parts of the Jewish Agency, he said, would upset the basis of the Zurich Agreement, by which the enlarged Jewish Agency was constituted in August 1929.
Dr. Hantke, the Managing Director of the Keren Hayesod, in presenting his report on the work of the Keren Hayesod, urged that efforts should be made to reach wider circles of contributors, to rationalise the economic activities in Palestine, and to reduce expenditure by obtaining the services of voluntary workers.
Dr. Arthur Ruppin, the Palestine colonisation authority and member of the Jewish Agency Executive, delivered an address on the colonisation possibilities in Palestine, dealing especially with middle-class colonisation based on orange plantation, but emphasising, at the same time, that for the facilitation of middleclass colonisation there must be the under-structure erected by the Haluzim.
The Conference has re-elected the German members of the Jewish Agency Council, and has appointed a Commission to draft proposals for a reform of the basis of organisation, and the mode of electing the non-Zionist section of the Jewish Agency.
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.
