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Israeli Doctors Visit Romania, Informed of Need for Supplies

December 29, 1989
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Two Israeli doctors who flew to Romania on Wednesday with eight tons of medical supplies for victims of the civil war received a warm welcome.

However, their hosts told them that medicine and medical equipment was more urgently needed than medical personnel, according to word reaching here from Bucharest.

That means that the six Romanian-speaking Israeli doctors and two nurses who have been standing by this week to fly to Bucharest may not go after all.

The Israeli medical rescue team was organized by the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Health and Magen David Adom, Israel’s counterpart of the Red Cross.

It consisted of Dr. Ya’akov Adler of Sha’are Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem, and Dr. Ilan Erez of Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava.

They flew with the supplies in an Israeli air force Hercules transport to Bucharest, where they were received by representatives of the Israeli Embassy, the Romanian Health Ministry and the International Red Cross.

The doctors were taken on a tour of hospitals in Bucharest on Thursday.

Their plane returned to Israel on Wednesday night, taking with it the families of embassy personnel.

Meanwhile, Moses Rosen, Romania’s chief rabbi, reported Wednesday that Jewish communities throughout the country are safe and well in the aftermath of the popular upheaval that ended the 24-year regime of President Nicolae Ceausescu.

He also said that he and his wife, Amalia, were visited Wednesday by the U.S. ambassador to Romania, Alan Green.

Rosen sent a handwritten message by fax from Bucharest to his friend Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation in New York.

The Romanian rabbi wrote that “thanks to the Almighty, Amalia, myself and all our friends in the communities throughout the country are well and hopeful that, in short time, dangers will no more exist.”

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