Despite the likelihood of Italy’s entry into the war, most of the approximately 4,000 Jewish refugees here await the tide of events with comparative calm. They are cognizant of the possibility of being transported en masse to German- occupied Poland, but after eight months or more of day-to-day hardships and expectation of the worst, those who have no hope of emigration are virtually resigned to whatever fate awaits them.
The few hundred who have prospects for emigration in the near future are panic-stricken at the possibility of seeing these hopes vanish if the war spreads to the Mediterranean.
Especially affected are 250 Polish Jewish refugees for whom issuance of Palestine certificates was recently authorized and who expected to embark shortly.
Another 100 German and Polish Jewish refugees already have their American visas but are prevented from sailing by lack of funds. The HIAS- ICA Emigration Association, which formerly lent money to individual refugees, is now unable to do so.
There are also 35 young German and Polish refugees recently selected by Solomon Trone, representative of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association of New York, to be among the first colonists in the Dominican settlement project. Provided no international complications intervene they will sail on the steamship Neptunia from Genoa on May 24. (Doubt was expressed here that the Neptunia would sail and hope was pinned on embarkation on the United States liner Manhattan on June 1.)
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.
