Revealing that France has granted 10,000 visas to Jewish refugees within recent weeks, Leon Jouhaux, French delegate to the United Nations, yesterday appealed to other nations in the U.N. to do likewise.
Speaking at a session of the Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee, M. Jouhaux declared that the problem of the Jewish DP’s is one of resettlement rather than of repatriation. He was the first delegate to refer directly to the fact that Europe’s 200,000 Jewish refugees were in a special situation requiring special attention. Later, S.N. Kosanovich of Yugoslavia also stated that the Jewish refugees required special handling.
“How could we forget,” M. Jouhaux asked, “that among the mass of these refugees and displaced persons there are notably 200,000 Jews concerning whose fate all nations should take a deep interest with the sincere desire of helping them and of making them forget the atrocious physical and moral suffering to which they were subjected by the Germans?
“How could we forget that a great number of displaced persons who are at present in the camps were literally transplanted to Germany by Nazi barbarism, separated from their families and forced to labor as convicts,” he continued. “Most of them have lost everything because of this horrible war–their wives, children and homes. How can we be surprised that under these circumstances they wish to forget,” he concluded.
The Committee decided to begin discussing the draft constitution of the International Refugee Organization on Tuesday.
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