Pleas to American Jewish women to consider themselves the guardians of Jewish children stranded by war and racial persecution and band together to assure the transfer of their charges to Palestine were sounded at the first annual meeting of the National Youth Aliyah Committee of Hadassah today in the home of Mrs. Roger W. Straus, one of the honorary chairmen.
Mrs. David B. Greenberg, national immigration chairman of Hadassah, announced that 1,200 children now holding certificates of transfer to Palestine issued by the British Government before the outbreak of hostilities, are expected to enter Palestine before April.
Scoring what he called the “empty offers” made by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Settlement of Political Refugees recently, Dr. Georg Landauer, head of the Central Bureau for the Settlement of German Jews in Palestine, told the fifty Committee members present that “no sociologist worth his salt would dare indicate how any of these plans can be implemented.” He pointed out that the absorption of Jews into industrial and urban communities was not a definitive solution since “at best it helps only single individuals.”
Dr. Landauer estimated that there were 75,000 Jews from Greater Germany now living in exile in western and southern Europe, 20,000 of whom were below 17 years of age. He said that of those about 10,000 were between 15 and 17 years of age and that “ten times this number could easily be absorbed into Palestine immediately.”
Miss Gisela Warburg, of Berlin, niece of Mrs. Felix M. Warburg, outlined the “herculean task” of shepherding hundreds of Jewish children who “have lost not only their hope but often their parents through the cruel traps set by their Nazi persecutors.” Miss Warburg, who was instrumental in facilitating the settlement of 500 Jewish children in temporary Youth Aliyah camps and schools in England during the last two years, described the chaotic conditions among stateless exiles and praised Great Britain and the neutral countries for their humanitarian work in saving at least a remnant of European Jewish youth. Miss Warburg was in charge of the Youth Aliyah Bureau in Germany from 1935 to 1938. She arrived here five weeks ago to lecture throughout the country on behalf of the movement.
Mrs. Straus presided at the meeting at which Mrs. Warburg and Mrs. David de Sola Pool, national president of Hadassah, also spoke. Mrs. Pool urged the group to “become a vanguard of guardians to protect these abandoned children in whose fate lies the possible regeneration of complete annihilation of European Jewry.”
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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.
