Despite the intense housing shortage in Israel–so– great at present that 40,000 men, women and children must live in transit camps–the 11,800 Jewish DP’s who arrived from the internment camps of Cyprus in February have already been successfully settled, receiving top housing priority, it was revealed here yesterday by Morris Laub who has just returned to this country after serving two-and-a-half years on Cyprus where he supervised the relief and rehabilitation program of the Joint Distribution Committee. He spoke at a press conference.
“The feat of settling the Cyprus refugees can be appreciated all the more,” Laub declared, “when one knows that in the last three weeks alone the number of per-##s living in Israel transit camps jumped by 12,000, because of the great lack of ##elling space.” Despite the “horrible physical facilities” of the Cyprus DP camps, they became the most effective possible staging area for Jewish DP’s going to Israel,” he added. “The emigrants who left Mr. Bevin’s camps after long months of internment were fully prepared to live in Israel by virtue of the extensive healthy, educational and vocational training program which the Joint Distribution Committee sponsored for them on Cyprus.”
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.
