French Jewry Girds for Unprecedented Mass Influx from Algeria

The French Jewish community prepared today to receive and absorb a massive immigration from Algeria, unprecedented in magnitude since the flight of the Jews from Germany during the Hitler regime, that is expected to double the size of the permanent French Jewish population.

The general assembly of the Fonds Social Juif Unifie, the central welfare organization, concluding its annual general conference today, heard reports on the situation of the Jews in Algeria and the extent of the problems with which the new immigration will confront the French community. In recent years, the French Jewish community has had to receive and absorb large numbers of Jewish refugees from Egypt. Tunisia and Morocco.

One of the first plans to be put into operation will be the reception of thousands of Algerian Jewish children whose parents want to place them in safety in Metropolitan France. The Strasbourg Jewish community is leading the way in this project and will receive the largest number of children. The community will convert all its homes, institutions and other buildings into temporary children’s shelters. It will thus be able to care for several hundred children in addition to the 220 for whom it is already caring.

In general, however, the FSJU will concentrate on long-term measures and for development of an expanded community structure that will facilitate the absorption of the newcomers into the life of the community. Most of the efforts will be therefore, along the lines of the social, religious and cultural absorption of the repatriates who are in danger of feeling lost or deserted in their new surroundings.

The French Government has enacted legislation to assist the economic integration of all the refugees from Algeria, but the FSJU will try to supplement this assistance in certain hard-core cases.

NEEDS OF YOUTH STRESSED IN PLANS; EMERGENCY ABSORPTION BUDGET SET

The plans adopted by the General Assembly placed great weight on the establishment of new youth centers, Jewish day schools, synagogues and clubs. The organization foresees creation of a large youth movement encompassing native-born as well as refugee children. The movement, which it is hoped to launch this autumn, will be based on the Soviet movement but with modifications to adapt it to the special circumstances here.

A. Kellerman, introducing the report on resolutions at the assembly, stressed that all funds raised through a special emergency campaign will be separately budgeted and used exclusively for absorption of North African Jews. He paid tribute to the Joint Distribution Committee, the Central British Fund and the Jewish Colonization Association for their aid in dealing with the situation.

“We must not conceal the fact,” M. Kellerman warned, “that should there be a mass exodus, all our projects as well as the Government’s program will be outdated and outgrown. “He pledged French Jewry to do its utmost for Algerian Jewry, and said it would continue to encourage their emigration to Israel. “Israel should not serve, however, as an alibi for our own shortcomings,” he asserted.

‘DRAMATIC’ CHANGES FORESEEN; HORROR, ANGUISH DESCRIBED

Jacques Kaufmann, chairman of the FSJU reception committee, which maintains reception centers in Paris and Marseilles, told the assembly that the Paris bureau had received 1,300 heads of families, representing more than 4,000 people. Most of them, he said, were from Tunisia but the number and origin of cases, he said, would change “dramatically” during the coming months. He paid tribute to OSE, the Jewish health organization, and to ORT, the Jewish rehabilitation organization, in whose provincial schools, he said, were 80 percent of the students of North African origin. He said teams of welfare workers would be sent to interview and offer assistance to refugee families which had not registered with the reception bureaus. It was also announced that refugees from North Africa will be invited to membership on a new commission to deal with the problems created by the immigration.

Andre Khayst, a representative of the French Ministry for Repatriates, explained the machinery set up by the Government to grant aid to refugees. He warned, however, that “should the gates of Algeria suddenly break open, the Government services themselves will be overwhelmed.”

Jacques Lazarus, an Algerian Jew representing the World Jewish Congress, told the assembly: “I have been in France only two days, and I am scared–scared when I think I shall have to go back.” However, he is going back. He is one of the few Jewish leaders in Algeria who has not forsaken his community.

Other Algerian Jews described the horrors facing the Algerian Jewish community at present. They said the Jews there were in constant, physical danger, one of them stating “we are in extreme anguish.” One told of the effects of the situation on the Jewish children who “suffer daily physical and moral shock, caused by the day-to-day experiences, witnessing unprecedented violence and bloodshed.”