President of Ecuador Says His Country Will Welcome Jewish Immigrants from Europe

Jews from European countries will be admitted without difficulty to Ecuador, President Dr. Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra today told Leon Gruszko, special correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“While I am President,” President Ibarra said, “the doors of Ecuador will be opened to every honest foreigner, regardless of race or religion. Jews who wish to establish an industry in Ecuador, or cultivate our fields, and who bring their capital, large or small, will be received with satisfaction. Our laws will protect them fully. And the Jews who cross our frontiers seeking protection from hatred and persecution, will receive shelter even though they have not one cent. Because in times of emergency when men who are suffering must be helped, the supreme law is that you must love your neighbor. This transcends any economic consideration or any administrative regulations.

“I know that in many instances the world has been cruel and barbarous. But Ecuador is a humanitarian, a liberal and a Christian state. The ancient church which is now just a memory, sold its ecclesiastical treasures to help the poor. The world must return to the practice of the primitive gospel if it wishes to be saved, If Jews agree to work in agriculture and, after reaching the countries in which they seek shelter, work in commerce instead, this is due to the cruelty with which they have been persecuted. To save themselves from a concentration camp, they will promise anything, and later cannot fulfill their promises. They are not to be blamed for this. The cruel persecutors in other countries, and the lack of adequate facilities for colonization in the countries of refuge are to be blamed.

“I hope the world will recognize its debt to the Jews. The Bible, the Gospel, Isias, St. John are Jewish. The greatest modern physicists and physicians are Jews. The Jewish race has a right to have a geographical home in which it may constitute a state. England and humanity have a juridical debt to the Jewish race. In Palestine the Jews must have the physical foundation on which they can recreate an autonomous and sovereign state from which Jewish thought, incomparable in its profoundness and creative ability, may point out to the world the road to deeper ethical orientation and scientific clearness. The Jew is not avaricious. It is Man, the bourgeois man, who is avaricious. The Jew is the greatest moralist of all times and a sage of the first order.”