The first group of expelled Egyptian Jews, 29 men, women and children arrived aboard the S. S. Israel from Naples today. The expellees uniformly reported that Jews in Egypt were being subjected to “cruel and inhuman” treatment.
They said that hundreds of Jews were under house arrest and hundreds more had been rounded up and thrown into prison. All Jewish property has been confiscated, the expellees stated.
The group included Jews of Egyptian British, Italian and other European nationality who had been given from one to four days’ notice and then deported from the country with a maximum of 20 pounds in cash.
One Jew, of Italian nationality, reported that he had been in a small cell with 15 others until the Italian consulate intervened in his behalf. The prisoners were not allowed to open the tiny window in the fetid cell, he related, and their fare consisted of bread and beans.
Leon Coher, a former resident of Alexandria, said he was called to the local police station and given a choice between deportation and arrest. When he chose to leave Egypt, he was placed under house arrest until he departed.
Morris Baruch Marzuk reported that he was arrested in Cairo, thrown into the Cairo prison and stayed there without seeing his family until he was placed on a ship leaving Egypt. A woman spokesman for the deportees tell reporters that all 29 were Egyptian born, that their parents had been born in Egypt and that the only crime which they had committed was that of being Jews.
S. Z. Shragai head of the Jewish Agency immigration department, who arrived in Israel with the immigrants, declared that 30,000 Egyptian Jews had been outlawed and had lost all protection of the law. Heads of businesses were forced to sign them over to the Egyptians and all assets were taken over by the Egyptian treasury. Some 1,200 Jews exiled from Egypt have already reached various European centers, Mr. Shragai disclosed.
Yehada Braginsky, head of the Agency’s absorption department, told newsmen that the expellees were all penniless and that Israel would have to expend great sums of money to resettle them. He praised American Jewry for proclaiming a special $100,000,000 rescue fund drive beside the regular United Jewish Appeal goal.
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