The House Foreign Affairs Committee met again today to vote finally on the Kee resolution providing $15,000,000 for direct relief to Poland, but decided to postpone their ballot until Tuesday because only six members, barely a quorum, attended.
The Committee heard a number of Congressmen passionately urge quick action because, they said, Poland has been stripped of all foodstuffs by the Nazis and starvation rides the land.
If the Committee favorably reports the resolution Tuesday, it will be as an authorization and will go directly to the floor of the House. It will not have to pass though the Appropriations Committee, where it might have been stalled.
Answering criticism that direct relief for Poland might shatter a precedent in U.S. foreign policy, Rep. John Dingell (Dem., Mich.) said he could cite a hundred precedents established by the U.S. to aid suffering peoples under all sorts of conditions. “The resolution,” he said, “reflects the feeling of the majority of the House on both sides of the aisles and I believe will be approved by the whole House.”
Chairman Sol Bloom (Dem.,N.Y.) told the Committee that Jewish organizations in this country have contributed $2,000,000 for Polish relief, which has been distributed impartially to Jews and non-Jews alike, most of whom fled Poland to neighboring countries.
“America has a definite and historic debt to Poland and the Polish people,” said Rep. J. Harold Flannery (Dem.,Va.) “If there is any light of civilization yet burning in Poland we ought to keep and nourish that flame.”
Rep. John Lesinski (Dem.,Mich.) told the Committee that the Nazis have stripped Poland not only of all food but that they have even taken the pots, iron pans, and household metal of the Poles and shipped them back to Germany.
Thomas Hennings, Jr. (Dem., Mo.) frequently voiced the objection that if the U.S. undertook to feed the Poles we might be called upon to feed many other nations. John Vorys (Rep.,O.) wondered whether feeding the Poles might not furnish indirect aid to Germany since it would encourage the Germans again to loot the Poles of their Autumn harvest in the belief that America would feed them.
The six Congressmen attending took a test vote in executive session. It was understood the vote stood four to two for approving the resolution, but the members felt the whole Committee should vote on the question.
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.
