$17,650,000 Raised at U.J.A. National Conference in Miami Beach

An all-time record for support of a philanthropic cause was set here today as the United Jewish Appeal got its 1955 nationwide campaign under way with $17,650,000 in individual contributions. The campaign opening came at the close of a three-day national inaugural conference.

This record-breaking figure represents gifts pledged here today and is the result of a strenuous pre-campaign solicitation of larger contributions that has been carried on since the first of the year.

William Rosenwald, general chairman of the UJA, hailed this outpouring of gifts as “a dramatic and unprecedented response to human needs.” He pointed out at the same time that the $17,650,000 in gifts tops a more than $14,000,000 campaign opening total of two years ago and that contributions this year “acted almost to a man in giving more than they did in 1953 and 1954.”

Morris W. Berinstein, a national campaign chairman, who presided at part of today’s session, termed the drive opening “a remarkable demonstration of support at a time when the United Jewish Appeal needs it more than ever to assure the continued saving of lives, the economic strengthening of the free people of Israel and the encouragement of the free cause in many lands.

Avraham Harman, Israel’s Consul General in New York, told more than the 600 campaign leaders that “Israel is surrounded by countries marked by internal instability, in which parliamentary institutions have given way to military dictatorships or degenerated into impotence.” In contrast, he said, “Israel has successfully maintained its democratic character and stability, and has been developing its institutions upon the basis of the rule of law and justice.”

Mr. Harman, in the major address at today’s closing session, stated that in seven years “Israel has emerged from the stage of improvisation and is today a solid and unshakeable part of the Middle East scene.” In its next seven years, he stated, Israel faces the two-fold task of realizing its goal of economic self-reliance and of “continuing to offer homes and rehabilitation to Jews striving to come to Israel.”

70,000 JEWS SEEK EMIGRATION FROM NORTH AFRICA, DR. SCHWARTZ REPORTS

Dr. Joseph J. Schwartz, executive vice-chairman of the UJA, told the delegates last night that political uncertainties in Tunisia and Morocco have led more than 70,000 Jews in the two North African countries to petition agencies of the United Jewish Appeal for prompt transfer to Israel. He reported that “registration for emigration from the two North African lands is at so fast a rate that offices of the UJA agencies cannot keep pace.”

Dr. Schwartz expressed concern over the ability of both the UJA and Israel to cope with this development, pointing out that the original 1955 plan calls for the movement from both countries of only 30,000. This movement alone, he added, requires a $35,000,000 outlay. Dr. Schwartz stressed that with funds to be raised immediately following launching of the nationwide UJA drive, it will become possible to hasten the transfer to Israel of as many among the registrants as there are funds for.

The large-scale movement of Jews from North Africa to Israel, Dr. Schwartz reported, actually got under way last August. He told the conferees that in the last seven months the UJA has helped almost 16,000 of these Jews to enter the Jewish State, and that most go almost immediately to farm colonies and to development areas through operation of a unique ship to settlement plan.

In this connection, Dr. Schwarz stressed that the aim of UJA’s program is more than the simple transfer of Jews from North Africa to Israel. “Our fundamental aim is two-fold,” he pointed out. “The first is to prevent the pile-up of these newcomers in tin hut immigrant villages as happened with Israel’s earlier arrivals. The second, through the direct movement of these immigrants from ship to settlement, is to assure at the earliest moment their employment in useful work and their adjustment to conditions in a modern land.”