Despite the large-scale deportations and massacres that have reduced the ranks of European Jewry, it would be incorrect to state that there is no organized Jewish life remaining in Europe today, Dr. Joseph Schwartz, European director of the Joint Distribution Committee, told a press conference here today.
No matter how few Jews remain in the country or how harassed they may be, there are still committees seeking to ease the situation as much as possible, working under the direction of local leaders with funds secured either locally or from the Jewish communities of neutral countries, notably Switzerland, Dr. Schwartz declared. He was extremely pessimistic, however, about the possibilities of these Jews escaping to neutral countries or overseas. The Nazis have clamped down a ban on exit visas in most of occupied Europe, Dr. Schwartz asserted, and the only possibility of emigration is illegal flight – and this is feasible only in few cases.
As a result of this situation, there is little hope that the thousands of Jewish children in France for whom exit visas had been secured before the Nazis occupied the entire country can be taken out, the JDC director said. The adults and children who do escape from France into Spain and Switzerland are being cared for, he declared, but they are only a small proportion of those who would emigrate if they could. There are about 6,000 refugees in Spain, and a similar number in Switzerland. In Portugal, which was formerly the chief concentration center for refugees bound overseas, only about 800 remain, he disclosed. Efforts are being made, he said, to secure transportation for children now in Spain and Portugal to countries in the Western Hemisphere. Visas for most of these youngsters have already been secured.
Dr. Schwartz touched briefly on the refugee situation in North Africa, reporting that the JDC is helping to maintain several thousand refugees in Algeria and Morocco through local committees. He said that there are about 10,000 to 12,000 refugees there – about 2,000 of whom are still interned.
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.
