The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society announced today that it has cabled $10,000 to the Refugee Aid Committee in Shanghai to finance emigration of 300 Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria to other countries. Under ordinary conditions the money would be dispatched by the HIAS-ICA Emigration Association in Paris, but war conditions made this impossible.
The HIAS also said it was arranging transportation to the United States on an American steamship for 12 refugees with United States visas stranded at Willemstad, Curacao, in the Dutch West Indies, by the German steamship Vancouver, en route to a Californian port, which cancelled the voyage because of the war.
HIAS also issued a statement declaring that Cuba, despite the impression created by the S.S. St. Louis incident, had “offered its hospitality to a considerable number of Jewish immigrants from persecution-infected and war-torn Europe.” A report of the Centro Israelita de Cuba was cited showing that during the first six months of 1939, not less than 3,187 Jewish refugees and immigrants found asylum in Cuba, one third of them on temporary permits.
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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.
