The annual mid-winter conference of Hadassah was told here today that Youth Aliyah is sorely in need of funds to meet the needs of orphans and children from deprived homes who wish to come to Israel. Yitzhak Artzi, head of the agency which is maintained jointly by Hadassah and the Jewish Agency, said that Youth Aliyah accepts 2,000 children a year but must reject an additional 3,000 applicants because of lack of funds. He said that priority was given since last June’s war to 350 orphans who came to Israel as a result of anti-Semitic demonstrations in their own countries in the aftermath of the war.
Y. Ginat, director general of Youth Aliyah, said that children from the Soviet Union who were permitted to emigrate to Israel before the Six Day War showed few effects of the Communist education they had received, although they had some initial misconceptions about Israel. They expected to find Israel an “imperialist country” but had no idea what that meant, he said. Whatever illusions they might have had about Russia were quickly dispelled by the Soviet’s anti-Israel propaganda of last May and June, he said.
Professor Kalman Mann, director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization, described plans for the forthcoming rehabilitation center on Mount Scopus. He said the center, which will have 60 beds, will care for patients who are victims of war, accidents, heart attacks and other diseases.
Paul Shulman of Haifa, an engineer who directed volunteers in the Mount Scopus restoration program after the Six-Day War, described hardships encountered by the workers. He said that 100 volunteers from the United States. Britain and South Africa will resume the restoration work this spring.
Two Henrietta Szold awards, the highest honor bestowed by Hadassah, were presented at the midwinter conference by Mrs. Rose Halprin, chairman of the American section of the Jewish agency and a former Hadassah president. They went collectively to the nurses at Hadassah Hospital for their outstanding service to wounded Israeli soldiers during the June war and to the Rothschild family of France which has long been associated with the organization’s medical services.
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.
