More than a year after liberation, approximately 50,000 Jewish displaced persons are still unable to write letters to the United States or anywhere else in their own language because of United States Army censorship regulations, according to a high official concerned with the DP problem.
The explanation is that these particular Jews write only in Yiddish which is not an “approved” language on the Army censor’s list. This is no attempt, it is explained, to stifle the freedom of these DP’s but is simply another example of bureaucratic inflexibility, with its resultant sad consequences. The question is now being discussed by Jewish representatives with high officers of the European Theater of Operations.
Most of those affected are refugees from Poland and other eastern Europeans who do not write German or Polish, two languages which are now on the “approved” list. Meanwhile, thousands of Jewish families in the United States and elsewhere wonder why they do not hear from their surviving relatives.
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.
