Annual Meeting Adopts $4,520,000 Budget for 1948; Dp Immigration to U.S. Urged

A 1948 budget of $4,520,000 was adopted here today at the 63rd annual meeting of HIAS, attended by 1,500 delegates of fraternal, labor and religious organizations. The principal speaker mo Lt.-Col. Cayton H. ##rost chief of the Displaced Persons branch of the Civil Affairs Division of the U.S. army, who has Just returned from Germany where he has been in charge of all DP camps in the U.S.’ zone of Germany since V-E Day.

A resolution urging Congressional approval of legislation to admit 400,000 displaced persons to the United States within the next four years was unanimously adopted at the parley. The meeting also adopted a resolution expressing thanks to the reparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organization for “the efficient and generous help they have extended to the displaced persons of Europe,”

Declaring that a solution to the plight of the DP’s “is paramount to a peaceful Europe,11 Col. Frost told the meeting that the “only sin of the DP’s is that they are willing to accept any fate rather than give up freedom.” Urging that Congress pass legislation to admit DP’s to the United States, Frost declared: “Those who have worked with the DP’s in Europe and have corns to know them, feel strongly that in general they are physically fit, law-abiding people who long to he permanently settled where they can enjoy political and religious freedom-American style – and have skills and industry, which would be true assets to any community.”

Samuel A. Telsey, president of HIAS, reported that a total of 25,143 Jews were Blast year helped to emigrate from Europe to Latin America, Australia and other countries. He added that “because of increased responsibilities in 1947, HIAS incurred la deficit of $685,357 during the year, Telsey pointed out that 800,000 Jews in Europe “are still living outside of DP camps amidst populations that are traditionally anti-Semitic; emigration is the only recourse, not only for the 220,000 Jewish DP’s in the camps, for also for the 800,000 others.”

Isaac 1, Asofsky, HIAS executive director, asserted that in no year of the organization’s 63-year existence was the “desperate and agonized cry for aid that arose fan the Jews answered with so much determination.” He reported that in 1947 HIAS affected 37,515 locations for persons in the United States and overseas, obtained more than 93,000 documents, and provided more than 170,000 meals to refugee arrivals In the U.S, HIAS also arranged the emigration of close to 10,000 Jews from Germany and Austria during the past year, Asofsky said.