About one million Jews in Europe will have to be moved to new homes during the post-war period, Abraham Herman, president of the HIAS, today told 2,500 delegates attending the annual convention of the organization at the Hotel Astor.
To Meet the transportation needs of dislocated Jews in 1945, the convention adopted a budget of $1.808,000 the largest in the 60 years of the Hias immigration activities. Mr. Herman emphasized that there had been a more liberal trend in immigration policies in a number of Central and South American countries, and HIAS offices and local committees in these countries are prepared to help immigrants adjust themselves and become an economic asset to the countries of their adoption quickly. “This war will have been fought in vain if out of it does not come a new hope and a new security in new homes for the displaced Jews of the world”, he said. “To move them to their new homes, to settle them there, and to watch over them until they become integrated into their new lands, is the sacred mission of American Jewry.”
Portugal continued to be the center of activities in the fiold of migration in 1944, despite the fact that the area of liberation in Europe grew greatly in that year. Isaac L. Asofsky, executive director of HIAS, reported. The Lisbon office of HIAS answered almost 7,000 inquiries on migration and related subjects; handled 9,500 requests to locate relatives in liberated countries; sent more than 60,000 food parcels to inmates of Concentration Camps, and assisted 5,800 refugees financially or technically to migrate overseas. HIAS offices in Spain, North Africa, Italy, France, Switzerland and Rumania, carried on similar activities.
In the United States, Mr. Asofsky reported, 201 steamers and trains carrying Jewish passengers were met by HIAS in 1944 and there were discharged into its care 1,070 Jewish aliens, many of whom would otherwise have been detained at Ellis Island, They were fed and sheltered until their osses were disposed of. HIAS expended $1,223,970.36 in 1944 for its migration activities, Harry Fisahel, treasurer, reported.
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.
