The hope that the Bermuda conference on refugees “will not turn out to be a mockery” was voiced here today by Mrs. David de Sola Pool, national president of the Hadassah, addressing 2,000 members of the organization at a luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel marking the beginning of a nation-wide observance of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the sailing of the first Hadassah medical unit to Palestine.
Mrs. Pool disclosed that Hadassah is now training workers in this country to form a Hadassah Service Corps which will be sent to Palestine for reconstruction activity in the fields of vocational guidance, child care, and refugee rehabilitation after the war. She also announced the establishment of the Louis D. Brandeis Reconstruction Fund which will be set up with monies left to Hadassah in the will of the late Supreme Court Justice.
“We hope that the Bermuda conference will not turn out to be a mockery, nare exploratory examination of the bitter problems of million of uprooted peoples, ours among them, but a forthright program of practical assistance which will make possible the speedy establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Pale stine,” the Hadassah president said.
A warning that the solution of the Jewish problem will be the “acid test” facing the United Nations after the war was given at the luncheon by Arthur Lourie, secretary of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs. “If we allow ourselves the luxury of rosy fantasies of a post-war world in which the lion will automatically lay down with the lamb, and good-will will prevail among men, we delude above all, those who cannot help themselves,” he said.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.