The “bitter paradox” of the new peace is that Europe’s 1,400,000 surviving Jewish people, who are ending their first full year of liberation from the yoke of Ritlerism, have not yet been freed from the terrors of starvation, displacement, political disfranchisement and economic dispossession, U. S. Senator Alben W. Barkley, of Kentucky, majority leader of the Senate, declared yesterday before more than 250 delegates attending an extraordinary New York State Regional conference sponsored jointly by the $100,000,000 United Jewish Appeal and the National council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. The delegates met at the Syracuse Hotel.
Senator Barkley demanded that Palestine be opened to large-scale Jewish immigration and colonization. “The governments of the world cannot leave these so-called displaced Jews of Europe indefinitely in camps,” he declared. “Those people cannot go in living in a ‘no-man’s land’ ringed in by invisible walls of homelessness and despair. The gates of Palestine must be flung open to enable tens of thousands of hungry and unwanted Jews of Europe to find sanctuary and a new life there.” The Senator appealed to the “great open heart of the British people” to open the gates of Palestine to Jewish immigration.
Isidore Sobeloff, executive director of the Jewish Welfare Federation of Detroit, addressing the conference, said that the great crisis affecting 1,400,000 Jewish survivors in Europe is the first concern of American Jewry. Discussing “Post-War Sights for Jewish Community Planning”, Mr. Sobeloff said: “The race against death in Europe was entered its most critical stage. When we couldn’t reach the Jews of Europe and millions died, it was tragic and hopeless. Now that we can reach so many of those who remain, it would be worse than tragic if we were to fail to do everything that is humanly possible to help them.”
Moses A. Leavitt, secretary of the Joint Distribution Committee, described the far-flung activities of his organization in fifty countries throughout the world. He told the assembled delegates: “Your presence here at this critical moment in Jewish history is a sign that we in America do not propose to turn our backs on the crucial sufferings of our people in war-shattered Europe.” He added that hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women and children in Europe look to the JDC for immediate aid.
FIRST 2,000 JEWISH REFUGEES FROM EUROPE ARRIVING IN U.S. NEXT MONTH
Edwin Rosenberg, first vice-president of the National Refugee Service, disclosed that 2,000 refugees are due to arrive in the United States next month under the terms of President Truman’s recent directive speeding up quotes immigration. That monthly late will continue thereafter, he said. The National Refugee Service, he added, “is charged with major responsibility to see to it that none of the newcomers to America never becomes a public charge.”
The delegates representing 24 communities in New York State also heard Major Judah Nadich, former advisor on Jewish affairs to Gen. Eisenhower, Joseph Goldstein of Rochester, a director of CJFWF, J.H. Rubens of Rochester, Edward H. Kavinoky of buffalo, president of the New York region of CJFWF. The delegates pledged themselves to give “unreserved support” to the $100,000,000 campaign of the United Jewish Appeal.
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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.
