Dr. James Berstein, managing director of the HIAS-ICA Emigration Association and European representative of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of America, arrived here today on the American liner Manhattan from Lisbon.
Dr. Bernstein, who conducted HIAS-ICA activities in the Portuguese capital after successively evacuating the organization’s offices from Paris and Bordeaux, expects to remain in New York for several weeks to confer with Jewish leaders before returning to Lisbon.
Commenting on the recent developments in France, Dr. Bernstein said very few refugees succeded in crossing the border into Spain and Portugal. Those who did succeed in reaching Portugal, he said, were being treated generously by the Government and people.
Dr. Bernstein reported the presence in unoccupied France of Leon Alter, former director of the Jewish Emigration Aid Society in Warsaw. He said Alter, who had been at Hendaye, on the Franco-Spanish border, before capitulation of France, was instrumental in helping several hundred Polish Jewish refugees escape into the unoccupied zone.
Dr. Bernstein also reported the presence, either on the Franco-Spanish border or on his way to Lisbon, of Dr. Mark Wischnitzer, former Jewish social worker and historian of Berlin. Dr. Wischnitzer had been released by the France authorities along with other refugees from Germany shortly before the capitulation.
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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.
