Nearly 4,000 Jews at the Belsen Camp today participated in an orderly demonstration to protest the imminent landing of the (##) refugees.
The meeting was organized by leaders of the Jewish Central Committee to divert a threatened march on Hamburg by several hundred DP’s who spontaneously began demonstrating this morning at the hour the first deportees were scheduled to have been disembarked. Shouting “Lets go to Hamburg,” crowds milled around the camp area, as offices closed and all work ceased. Their leaders convinced them that a meeting was the most practical idea.
From an improvised platform on “Freedom Place,” the camp’s square, speakers, including Dr. Noah Barou, of the World Jewish Congress executive in London, and Marc (##)um, French Zionist leader, addressed the throng. Hurriedly prepared banners called for “Justice for the Jewish People,” “Open the Gates of Palestine,” “Down with Bevin.”
Later, another meeting in one corner of the camp burned an effigy of Bevin, (##) hoisted a Union Jack on which a swastika had been superimposed, despite pleas by the DP leaders that no action be taken that might provoke incidents. Joseph Rosen(##), chairman of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, spoke at this meeting.
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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.
