President Roosevelt’s offer of asylum in the United States for refugees from Germany and Austria and his call for an international conference on refuge for persecuted minorities were criticized by the Hebrew daily Davar.
As far as the Jews were concerned, the philosophy underlying the United States’ move was rejected by Davar, the world’s largest Hebrew daily and official organ of the Histadruth. The paper held that the Roosevelt plan was “philanthropy” and therefore inconsistent with Zionist ideas. What the Jews require, the paper held, is a solution on a “national basis.”
While the acceptance of refugees in other countries would solve the problem for socialists or for Catholics whose emigration will be only a temporary phenomenon, Davar said, the Jews will not return to the countries from which they flee, and the only permanent solution for them is in their own land. The representative of the nations at the conference proposed by President Roosevelt were urged by Davar to consider that there is only one way to save the Jews–“to open Palestine to them.”
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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.
