A total of 16,560 Hungarian Jews have arrived in Austria since the beginning of the Hungarian rebellion and fighting, Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman, executive vice president of the United Jewish Appeal, reported at a press conference here today.
Rabbi Friedman noted that this figure represented 14 percent of the Jewish population of Hungary and twice that of Austria. He said that although a higher percentage of Jews than non-Jews had fled Hungary, a smaller percentage of Jewish refugees had been accepted as immigrants to other countries. Sixty percent of the non-Jewish refugees have already left Austria, he pointed out, but only 25 percent of the Jews. There are still 12, 000 Jewish refugees in Austria.
This meant more financial and moral support which Jewry must supply, he underlined. The UJA; he said, had undertaken an extraordinary $100, 000, 000 campaign for refugee needs alone this year. The Joint Distribution Committee, a UJA beneficiary organization, Rabbi Friedman said, is currently supplying cash and caring for supplementary needs of the refugees, including supplying kosher food, setting up kosher kitchens in the camps, providing prayer books and other religious supplies and setting up religious schools for the children.
Rabbi Friedman, who is here together with Moses A. Leavitt, executive vice chairman of the JDC; said his purpose in coming to Vienna was to assure the refugees that American Jews are behind them in their heroic effor to reject Communism and build themselves a new life.
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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.
