A large Palestine Fund to be raised in collaboration with other organizations and leading Jewish circles to make possible the immigration and settlement of thousands of German Jews in Palestine is being started by the Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which in an appeal issued here urges the co-operation of Zionists and non-Zionists to raise the sums which will be required.
The events in Germany, it says, constitute a tragic turning-point in the history of our people. What is happening there today not only affects the Jews in that country but Jews all over the world.
Thousands of Jewish families are already destitute and many thousands may be faced by a similar fate in the next few weeks. Thousands of fugitives are collecting in various countries of Europe. The Jewish communities of these countries are doing their utmost to render first-aid to their brethren who have been bereft of their homes, but systematic and united endeavors on the part of us will be needed in order to provide for the future.
THE WANDERING JEW AGAIN
Economic relief measures for the Jews in Germany must be taken in hand on a large scale immediately, the appeal states.
Once again, as has so often happened, a Jewish community that numbers some hundreds of thousands finds the foundation of its existence shattered. Thousands and tens of thousands are compelled to take up their burdens.
Germany has become a principal center of the distress entailed by Jewish emigration. True, the neighboring countries have for the present admitted a number of the fugitives, but the host of the emigrants to be expected from Germany is faced, like Jewish emigration as a whole, by the fateful question: Whither?
Whilst the East European countries in the Middle Ages, and the overseas countries in the nineteenth century, held their gates open for Jewish immigration, we are now confronted by a world that is almost completely closed to us. Palestine with its steadily increasing agriculture and industry, with its constantly increasing capacity for the absorption of Jewish immigrants, constitutes today our greatest hope.
LINK WITH GERMAN JEWS
In this hour of their distress, the Jewish Agency Executive appeal says, we feel linked with the Jews of Germany more closely than ever. We share their anguish, we admire the courage and bravery with which they are bearing their trials, we are grateful to them for the dignity with which they are upholding the Jewish name and Jewish honor; and we are convinced that they will valiantly defend their full civil rights and all their economic positions in the country to which they have devoted their best energies for many generations.
These feelings of fraternal solidarity, and the consciousness of our being united by a common destiny, must find expression as speedily as possible in definite action.
The leaders of the Zionist movement and of the Jewish Agency consider it their duty at this moment to direct the attention of the entire civilized world, in the light of the latest events, to the cardinal importance of Palestine for the fundamental and radical solution of the Jewish question.
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