Exodus Refugees Celebrate High Holidays in Hastily Converted Barracks-synagogues

New York’s services for the Exodus refugees now at the Poppendorf and Am Stau detention camps, near here, were held in hastily improvised barracks synagogues.

Benches were installed in the barracks barely in time for the first services Rosh Hashanah eve. The converted barracks were jammed with worshippers and hundreds participated on the outside. Among the persons out-of-doors were aged women and young girls who were barred from participating in the indoor services because there had not been time to prepare separate wings for men and women as prescribed by Orthodox tradition.

Special holiday supplies of foodstuffs were distributed by the Joint Distribution Committee on Sunday and the holiday meals were much more adequate than those which the refugees had received for many weeks.

International Refugee Organization representatives who had suspended their screening operations during the holiday, set up their “processing” line again today, but the refugees continued their boycott of the administration. A medical unit, organized by the J.D.C. and consisting of four doctors and seven nurses, arrived at the camps today.

Meanwhile, a large quantity of supplies which three voluntary relief organizations have collected, still remains outside the camps awaiting official British sanction before they can be distributed among the Jews. The British are apparently “punishing” the relief agencies for refusing to cooperate in the forced debarkation of the refugees at Hamburg.

The inmates of the Am Stau camp have already elected a central committee, while elections are in progress at Poppendorf. The first major task of the committees will be the organization of schools for children, but they will be severely campered by an almost complete lack of text books.