British Cooperation on Emigration of Jews from Hungary Provokes Surprise in Washington

The joint statement issued yesterday by the United States and the United Kingdom announcing their acceptance of the offer of the Hungarian Government to permit the emigration of Jews from Hungary came as a complete surprise to those in Washington who have been watching developments from the sidelines, the New York Post reports today.

The Washington correspondent of the Post observes that there were good reasons to believe that the two governments had reached such an impasse over the proposal to admit Hungarian Jews to Palestine, as stipulated in Hungary’s offer, that it was feared that they would never come to terms. The negotiations between Washington and London over the reply to Hungary’s offer hit a snag when it came to the question of how far the British would go in the matter of issuing Palestine immigration certificates to Jews in Hungary.

“Though as recently as Monday there seemed some hope of a compromise being reached, the next couple of days’ developments had been most discouraging, and it seemed inevitable that the Palestine issue was going to break down the whole project,” the Post reports. It adds that so far the Palestine question has not been answered yet. The joint Anglo-American statement,” the article says, “certainly doesn’t answer it. On the contrary, it very carefully by-passes the whole issue, otherwise the statement probably would never have been forthcoming.”