The appointment of Patrick Malin, a former member of the State Department, to the post of vice-director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees was announced today by the State Department. The selection of Mr. Malin, who, as the State Department noted in its announcement, “has had experience in refugee matters in Europe,” was made at a meeting of the executive committee of the Intergovernmental Committee held in London this month “to consider the recommendations of the Bermuda Conference.”
Mr. Malin has been one of the key men in ex-Gov. Lehman’s Office of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitations Operations, and his selection as associate head of the refugee work indicates that it will be carried on in close cooperation with the Lehman agency. He already has resigned from the Lehman office and will take up his new duties with the Intergovernmental Committee in London shortly.
It was reported here today that the Intergovernmental Committee, at its meeting early this month in London, approved a program of expanded activities on the basis of the decisions reached at the Bermuda Conference. While the Committee is barred from dealing with Nazi Germany for the release of oppressed peoples, it will endeavor to get refugees out of neutral countries, and, where possible, out of enemy-occupied territories. The Committee, it was stated, will also try to arrange for havens to which refugees can be transported when shipping facilities are available. The question of Jewish immigration to Palestine will be outside of the Committee’s scope, it was pointed out.
As executive vice-chairman of the Friends’ Service Committee, Mr. Malin was in Spain during the Civil War and supervised relief work for both sides in that conflict. In 1941 and 1942 he was in France in charge of the Quaker food relief work. From 1924 to 1930 he was private secretary to Sherwood Eddy, head of the International YMCA, and in that capacity spent five months in Europe on YMCA work.
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