A budget of $5,000,000 will be required by HIAS in 1947 to implement a program of increased Jewish emigration from various countries in Europe, it was reported by Isaac L. Asofsky, executive director, at a meeting of the board of directors of the organization last night. The HIAS budget for 1946 was $1,500,000.
Returning from a two-month trip during which he visited many countries in Europe, Asofsky reported that anti-Semitism is still strong in Germany, Austria, Poland, Rumania and other counties. “Europe’s Jews,” he said, “feel that they are perched on the rim of a veritable volcano filled with the lava of hate and intolerance.” A sense of insecurity prompts many thousands of Jews to seek emigration to countries where they can live in peace after surviving Hitler’s reign of terror, he declared.
In Poland, Asofsky reported, Jews do not speak Yiddish any longer, and many find it expedient to disguise their Jewish-sounding names, even though the government is friendly to the Jews. He estimated that there are about 80,000 Jews there today, and said that most of them want to emigrate. In Austria, Jews who have returned cannot retrieve their properties and “are constantly harassed by obvious indications that Nazism still lives.” In Rumania, Jews face anti-Semitism, not from the government but from the people, the HIAS director declared.
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