Two British newspapers, the News-Chronicle and Daily Sketch, welcome the Government’s decision to permit refugees to work in Britain on the grounds that it was a humanitarian action and would aid British industry.
The News-Chronicle states editorially:
“Many of these exiled men and women suffered terribly at Hitler’s hands and are only too anxious to do their bit to overthrow the regime they hate. Many also have qualifications which make their help valuable to this country. It is right that we should regard them not as Germans and Austrians but as beings whose aims are ours.”
The Sketch cites two instances to show that the decision to permit refugees to work was beneficial to British skilled labor.
“Twelve skilled British workers had been idle for months because only one could assemble a complex German toolmaking machine on which their jobs depend. A German Herr Doctor —- was idle, too. He was a £1,000-a-year man in his fatherland. Today they are all smiling. The Government’s new order allowing aliens to work will set these 13 men at work at once.”
The other instance was “of a young engineering draughtsman who was put in a concentration camp because he is a Jew. He was tortured for not making his bed properly. His right arm is useless, the nerves destroyed. In England he has ret aught himself, can do his intricate work left-handed now. He has special knowledge of secret processes England wants.”
The Daily Sketch also declares that “brilliant young German Jewish chemists, exiled by Hitler, are among the scientists who are risking their lives for Britain in the fight against Nazidom.”
“Leading them are three famous scientists, one of them of German origin, who must not be named,” the paper adds. “They are the men who will shield us against the chemical horror which Hitler may launch against us.”
Newspapers also report that among 348 Germans interned in Britain were a number of Gestapo agents, sent here with bogus papers to pass themselves off as refugees.
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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.
