Dr. Maurice Hexter, non-Zionist member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine Executive, arrived today on the Queen Mary to confer with Felix M. Warburg, Bernard Flexner, chairman of the Palestine Economic Corporation, and Charles Liebman, head of the Refugee Settlement Corporation, on development of the Huleh drainage and colonization project in the Holy Land. He will return to London with Mr. Warburg on March 10.
Development of the Huleh concession, Dr. Hexter told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, will begin within a year but not until after the Royal Commission’s report is issued. Palestine Jewry is awaiting the report “like the verdict of a court,” he asserted.
“The Jews mean to carry on their work within the framework of the report of the Royal Commission as finally accepted by the British Government and the League of Nations,” he declared.
Another passenger was Simon marks, vice-president of the British Zionist Federation, here with his wife and daughter for a holiday of from four to five weeks. He indicated that discussion was going on among Jewish leaders in London looking toward some form of enlarged aid for the Polish Jews.
What form such aid might take could not be specified, he said, before careful study, but he emphasized his personal opinion that the Polish Jews must be helped to earn a living and to develop “the hachshara spirit–the spirit of self-reliance.”
Mr. Marks, who is a member of the executive of the Council for German Jewry and served as a member of the delegation to the United States last year whose negotiations resulted in the formation of the Council, praised the cooperation of the various Jewish organizations participating in the council.
“The cooperation is very good,” he said. “It is the first time in Jewish history that all organizations are working in cooperation and in agreement.” He specified the Joint Distribution Committee, HIAS-ICA Emigration Assin, HIAS, the Palestine Office and the Reichsvertertung der Juden in Deutschland.
The Council’s emigration plan, he reported, has so far been successful. About three quarters of a million pounds have already been raised in England with the prospects that the 11,000,000 mark will be reached. The goal of 25,000 annual emigration has so far been maintained.
The Jewish population of Germany has fallen from 530,000 to no more than 380,000, Mr. Marks said. The percentage of Jews in the categories over 45 years of age has increased markedly owing to the emigration of youths.
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