The Intergovernmental Refugee Committee will turn over $22,500,000 to Jewish organizations as compensation for damage suffered by Jewish communities during the Nazi regime, Eliezer Kaplan, treasurer of the Jewish Agency, disclosed today in a report on the state of the Jewish community of Palestine, delivered at a meeting of the Histadruth.
He revealed that the Joint Distribution Committee would receive 60 percent of the sum, while the Jewish Agency would get 40 percent. The money comes from some $25,000,000 in Nazi gold and other assets which the Allied Reparations Commission to warded the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee last December for the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of Nazism.
Kaplan further declared that the Agency had proposed a plan to the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee for the absorption of 100,000 European Jews in Palestine at the rate of 10,000 monthly. The maintenance and absorption of each wave of 10,000 immigrants will cost between $12,000,000 and $14,000,000, he estimated, adding that the cost of absorbing 10,000 children would be somewhat lower–$8,000,000 to $10,000,000. He reported that the Agency has asked for an international loan to carry through the project.
The Agency has spent about $7,200,000 in the last nine months for immigration, Kaplan stated, and an additional $4,400,000 for the improvement of agriculture in the Jewish settlements and $1,200,000 on various housing schemes. His report also disclosed that the Agency has spent $68,000,000 for all purposes since 1939 and that its income during the same period was less than expenditures, resulting in a deficit of nearly $7,000,000.
Some 80 new agricultural establishments have been organized in Palestine since 1939, Kaplan said, reporting that the Agency plans, on the basis of land already owned by the Jews in Palestine, to establish 6,000 new agricultural units and to expand 3,000 other units already farmed by Jews. Among the new projects will be 40 settlements in the Galilee and Negev areas. In addition, the Agency has made arrangements for the bringing of water to new settlements in the Negev by next March. The Jewish National Fund has acquired 75,000 acres of land since the last World Zionist Congress in 1939, he said. The cost of this land was $48,000,000.
Turning to Jewish industry, Kaplan declared that there was full employment Palestine with only about 1,000 persons unemployed. The full employment record, he said, was all the more remarkable in light of the fact that 53,000 new workers entered the country since 1939. There are 60,000 persons directly employed in Jewish industry Pointing out that 42 percent of all Palestinian Jews are employed in white collar and professional jobs and that another 27 percent are engaged in factory and manual work, he asserted that this percentage of workers was higher than that in other Jewish communities throughout the world, except perhaps in the Soviet Union.
Referring to competition from imports as being the chief problem confronting Jewish industry today, Kaplan stated that he will propose to the World Zionist Congress that it increase its subsidies to Jewish industry, which he said has not yet proven its ability to withstand the competition of foreign products.
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.
