Jewish children and adults who less than three months ago were confined in German concentration camps sang and danced gaily here last night at a farewell party prior to their departure for Palestine. The emigrants included about 600 children and youths and 1,000 adults. Some were released from the Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt camps just before the German collapse, while others were freed by the victorious Allied troops.
U.S. officers from the nearby American base, from which thousands of troops are being deployed for service in the Far East, and leaders of Jewish relief groups spoke briefly, wishing the refugees God-speed. Two-hundred boys and girls circled about the camp singing Zionist songs, in which the adults joined from time to time. Two Greeks from a nearby camp for displaced persons provided music from a violin and guitar. A ten-year-old girld sang a Hungarian Zionist song relating the plight of the Jews scattered throughout the world because the Jewish flag does not fly over Palestine.
The joyousness of the celebration was highlighted by the fact that it was held only a few miles from the consulate gardens in which, five years ago, thousands of desperate Jews crowded seeking visas to any overseas country that would take them, in order to escape from the Nazis.
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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.
