Allied Neglect of Dp’s Hit by UJA Aide; Links Solution of Problem to Palestine Issue

The allied problems of finding permanent homes for the 250,000 displaced Jews in Europe and of determining the status of the Jewish homeland in Palestine must be solved by the democratic nations if thousands of the DP’s are not to perish in the coming year, Herbert R. Abeles, who has just returned from a two-month tour of Europe and Palestine on behalf of the U.J.A., warned today.

Branding the failure to aid the displaced Jews, the “No. l. crime of 1946,” Mr. Abeles, who is the president-elect of the Jewish Community Council of Essex County, New Jersey, which takes in the city of Newark, said that the DP’s are teetering on the edge of despair. Aware of the many obstacles in the way of emigration to the United States and Palestine, many are resigned to going anywhere that they can be permanently resettled.

The Jewish communal leader was particularly critical of the inadequate vocational facilities in many of the DP camps. Aside from the hardships of sub-standard food and shelter, the displaced Jews in many–although not all–camps are not enabled to engage in any sort of vocational or retraining activities. Their daily regimen consists of sleeping and eating in wretched quarters with long hours of idleness in intervals between unappetizing meals.

Palestine, Mr. Abeles stated, “is as much a conquered country as any that was occupied by the Germans.” Barbed-wire entanglements and fortified police and military posts dot the country. Despite British restrictions, however, the Jewish population and its economy are thriving, and the Jews are determined not only to maintain what they have built but to enlarge the area of Jewish settlement and make possible the absorption of thousands of refugees, he added. Questioned concerning the recent outbreaks, he expressed the belief that all of the so-called terrorism would cease once the White Paper restrictions were lifted.