Four official spokesmen for more than 180,000 Jewish displaced persons in Germany paid tribute today to the American Army for its humanitarian action in permitting 100,000 Jews from Poland fleeing from persecution to find haven in the American zone of occupation. They emphasized that only through large-scale support of American Jews through the $170,000,000 United Jewish Appeal campaign in 1947, will the homeless Jews of Europe be saved from despair resulting from the failure of intergovernmental action to make possible the resettlement of hundreds of thousands in Palestine, the United States and other countries.
The leaders of the Jewish DP’s who expressed their views in a press conference at the national headquarters of the United Jewish Appeal, arrived by air this week to confer with American Jewish leaders on programs for supplementary relief, rehabilitation and resettlement assistance. The group of DP leaders included Leon Retter, 24, general secretary of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the American zone of Germany; Dr. Boris Pliskin, chairman of the Committee’s Health Department; Samuel Shlomovitz, chairman of the Frankfurt Region of the Central Committee, and Norbert Wollheim, vice chairman of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the British zone of Germany.
In 1946 the sum of $3,200,000 was made available by the United Jewish Appeal for the program carried on by the Joint Distribution Committee in behalf of the Jewish DP’s in Germany and Austria. It was pointed out that the sum of $17,500,000 will be required in 1947 for these areas alone in the large-scale relief and rehabilitation program carried on with the funds to be raised by the United Jewish Appeal.
MORALE OF DISPLACED JEWS REPORTED CONSIDERABLY LOWER THAN A YEAR AGO
The morale of the displaced Jews in the American and British zones of Germany is considerably lower today than it was a year ago, and the conviction is growing among the displaced Jews that permanent resettlement in other lands, preferably Palestine, is their only hope since “there is no future in Europe for Jews,” the spokesmen of the Jewish DP’s said.
Expressing their gratitude to the U.S. Army which they described as “the only Army in the world which offered salvation and a haven to our people,” the spokesmen of the displaced Jews said that the German people’s deep-rooted hatred of the Jews made the continued stay of the Jewish DP’s in Germany “intolerable” and eliminated the possibility of Jewish settlement in Germany or elsewhere in Europe.
Mr. Retter, German-born veteran of the underground resistance movement, who speaks ten languages fluently, served as spokesman for the DP leaders from the American zone. He emphasized that failure of the Jews of America to provide new homes and large-scale relief assistance in 1947 though the $170,000,000 U.J.A. campaign “would result in an overwhelming and absolute despair among the Jewish DP’s from which there could be no recovery.”
Mr. Retter reported that the great majority of the displaced Jews in the American zone wanted to emigrate to Palestine where they could begin their lives anew. Others, he added, wanted to come to the United States or other countries which would receive them. Speaking for the displaced Jews in the British zone, Mr, Wollheim, who lost his wife, child and parents during the Nazi terror, reported similar sentiments among the Jews in his area.
“BITTERNESS AND DISILLUSIONMENT” GROW. AMONG JEWS IN GERMANY
Both Retter and Wollheim stated that the continued absence of adequate intergovernmental machinery to deal with the problems facing the DP’s has resulted in considerable “bitterness and disillusionment.” The DP leaders warned that the “Jews cannot stay in Germany any more. There must be some form of governmental action and that action must come soon to help the present situation. What we have now in the DP camps cannot go on indefinitely. If something doesn’t happen soon, one cannot foretell the consequences. If help does not come soon, despair will come sooner.”
The two DP leaders praised the Joint Distribution Committee for its efforts in bringing into the camps supplementary food and clothing allowances and medical supplies, without which, they said, the Jewish DP’s could not have been able to get along.
FOOD RATIONS FOR JEWISH DP’S CONTAIN LESS PROTEINS AND FATS THIS YEAR
Dr. Pliskin, who served as a medical officer with the Polish Army at the outset of the war and subsequently was arrested three times by the Gestapo for his underground activities, said that the daily food rations now given DP’s in the American zone, while of the same caloric content as the rations provided a year ago, included considerably less proteins and fats than were included in the DP diet last year. He said that many 12-year-old Jewish children in the DP camps have the physical appearances of six-year-olds in this country.
“The DP’s in the American zone now receive 2,200 calories a day but this diet is made up of 72 to 75 percent carbohydrates, eight to 10 percent proteins, and eight to 12 percent proteins and an equal amount of fats were essential for a normal, healthy diet. “Our children cannot develop into normal, husky youngsters on our present DP diet,” he added.
Mr. Wollheim declared that conditions in the British zone were even worse, pointing out that the food rations for the DP’s in the British zone had recently been reduced from 2,200 to 1,550 calories daily. In addition, Mr. Wollheim said, British authorities, in an attempt to halt the influx of Jews fleeing renewed anti-Jewish terrorism in Poland, had refused to issue food rations to 3,000 Polish Jews who recently reached the DP camp in Belsen, making it necessary for the displaced Jews already in the camp to share their meagre rations with the newcomers.
The DP leaders agreed that any diminution of J.D.C. assistance to the displaced Jews in both zones, in the form of supplementary food and clothing allowances and medical supplies made possible by the United Jewish Appeal would be tantamount to “a catastrophe.” The impending liquidation of UNRRA, they said, placed increased responsibilities on the Joint Distribution Committee which would have to be met through the United Jewish Appeal.
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.
