Hadassah Adopts $535,000 War Budget, $250,000 Youth Aliyah Goal

Hadassah’s 26th annual convention tonight accepted a medical and war emergency budget totaling $535,350. Of this sum $100,000 will be used as a war chest to meet unforeseen emergencies resulting from the spread of hostilities.

Earlier, the nearly 1,000 delegates accepted a $250,000 goal for Youth Aliyah for the next year and also voted $80,000 as a special birthday gift for Miss Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah and head of its Youth Aliyah bureau in Jerusalem, to be known as the Henrietta Szold Loan Fund for Youth Aliyah Graduates.

Hadassah sent $383,000 for normal and emergency services to Palestine in the past year. The child welfare budget for the next year is $100,000. Hadassah now administers 38 child welfare stations, 32 playgrounds and safety isles for evacuated children. It feeds 20,000 children, provides school and hygiene for 70,000 and nutrition study for 100,000.

The convention pledged increased aid to the British and Jewish health authorities, more hospital beds, training of doctors and nurses for war service and anti-malaria control.

Mrs. Edward Jacobs, member of the Jewish Agency Executive, presiding at tonight’s session, asked Arab cooperation with the Jews and expressed faith in Palestine’s survival, which she said depended on the fate of the democracies.

This afternoon, Mrs. Alexander M. Lamport, treasurer, reported that Hadassah had raised $1,400,000 for all its projects last year. This included $603,000 which the Youth Aliyah Committee raised, according to a report by Mrs. Samuel J. Rosensohn, finance committee chairman. These funds will be used for transfer, education and maintenance of children now awaiting entry into Palestine and for an extended youth conservation program benefitting Palestinian and refugee adolescents.

Mrs. David B. Greenberg. Youth Aliyah chairman, reported at a luncheon that 1,197 children holding certificates entered Palestine since September, 1939. Despite the war the Youth Aliyah is now attempting to bring 1,200 children resident in warring and neutral countries, plus 400 living in England, via new routes to Palestine.

Another speaker at the luncheon was Clarence E. Pickett, executive secretary of the American Friends’ Service Committee, who urged that refugees be provided with the educational and social opportunities which would “help them to make a rich and patriotic contribution to our national and social heritage.” He appealed to Christians to join other religious groups in this task.

“I, as a Christian, esteem it a privilege to join hands of Jewish blood in a unified effort to take this human material, unwanted in Europe, and to help it nourish the spiritual and cultural bloodstream of American life,” the Quaker leader said.

At the opening session last night, the nearly 1,000 delegates adopted a resolution, addressed to the State Department, appealing to the United States to give maximum assistance, “short of war, to the gallant people of Great Britain, now the last citadel of democracy in the Eastern Hemisphere.”

In her presidential address, Mrs. David de Sola Pool said that Hadassah “stands unequivocally with Britain, upon whom history has set the gigantic tasks of liberating the world from a monster.” She asked support of all efforts to safeguard democracy in this country and for widespread aid to Britain and Palestine.