Arrangements to bring 5,000 Jewish children and 500 adults out of Nazi-occupied territory, after the Anglo-American refugee conference in Bermuda last winter, were thwarted when the Nazi puppet government of Rumania arrested the agent there, it became known today.
Chairman Sol Bloom, New York Dem., made the disclosure during public hearings before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the Baldwin-Rogers resolution favoring a special government commission to plan the rescue of European Jews. Bloom, who was one of three United States delegates to the Bermuda conference, told how ships had been chartered to remove Jews from Rumania and arrangements made to build reception camps for them in North Africa. The British government, he said, had offered to pay all shipping costs.
Defending the accomplishments of the Bermuda Conference, Bloom spoke of 22,000 refugees, 6,000 of them Jews, removed from Spain. Other work now going on as a result of the meeting depends on secrecy, he added, and would become valueless if known.
In a statement submitted to the committee, Wandell Willkie urged adoption of the resolution. He regretted his inability to appear in person and said: “The appointment of a commission to establish temporary reception camps for the Jewish people of Europe is of paramount importance. The urgency of the situation demands immediate action.”
Dean Alfange, American Labor Party candidate last year for Governor of New York, said that the purpose of the bill was not to deal with refugees already outside Hitler’s grasp, but to enable others to get out. He criticized the statement on atrocities issued from the Moscow conference by President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin, for not mentioning specifically crimes against Jews. He called for a special warning on atrocities against Jews, and for notice to Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Vichy France that they would be held responsible for Jews departed into Nazi hands.
Others who testified at today’s hearings emphasized that the problem of rescuing the Jews of Europe is so urgent and so complicated that only a special government agency charged with its solution can effectively accomplish it. They pointed out that this problem must be dealt with by some specific agency, if there exists a sincere and earnest desire to take effective action to save those millions of Jews awaiting annihilation.
The very fact of the establishment of an Agency to Save the Jewish People of Europe would considerably improve their situation, they argued. It would show the importance attached to the fate of the Jews by the United States or by the United Nations as a whole — in case the Agency is to become an Inter-Allied one — which would impress Germany and particularly her satellite nations and force them to relieve the position of the Jews out of fear of retribution.
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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.
