Lord Marley, chairman of the British Parliamentary Council of the ORT, told an Allied Jewish Campaign luncheon today that 25,000 of the 45,000 refugees in Britain are destined for emigration and “need training to qualify them as desirables in any other country.”
Addressing 750 campaign workers at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, Lord Marley said: “We seem to be living in an era when a certain type of government sees no other means of getting what it wants than by attacking its helpless minorities. Of course it’s mostly the well-to-do who can emigrate but their problem is serious and vocational training is essential to break down what I call the refugee resistance they encounter in 1939, 11,000 Germans were giving employment to 18,000 English workers. This helped enormously, but no more refugees are being admitted to England today, although it’s estimated that only 1,500 aliens now there are enemies.
“War or no war, agriculture always goes on. Industrial production must continue no matter who runs a country. The better off may leave but the poor never move. They stay in all their misery and suffering, and it is the trades that they live by. We owe a lot to such older organizations as the ORT, whose diversity of trade training and long experience can build new programs to aid them so that they will be useful where they are and welcome in countries whither they emigrate.”
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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.
