The Italian Government has appealed to Britain to “find room somewhere” for refugee Jews whose continued illegal immigration into Italy en route to Palestine is reaching large proportions.
Guido De Vito, chief of the confidential affairs division of the Ministry of the Interior, said today that a request had been made to Britain and also to all agencies and governments “that might help us” since Italy could not afford to maintain these refugees on her soil. He emphasized, however, that this appeal was only for help in finding homes for the transient Jews and not for help in policing Italian frontiers against further immigration.
“Our frontier police is functioning as efficiently as possible,” he said, “and that is a job solely for the Italian Government. The British may wish to patrol the sea-coast but they will have to do that themselves.”
The Italian request, the official said, was made out of sympathy for the refugee Jews and because the influx of Jews during the past few months was creating a problem “too big for the Government to cope with. They come only to go from here to Palestine.
“We would be pleased to see them go there, though we think they ought to go legally,” he added. “Since they really do not want to stay here and we cannot afford to keep them, we think the problem of where to put them is rightly that of the British Government and of the Allied Governments. If the plan to admit a 100,000 Jews into Palestine had gone through, everything would have been all right,” he concluded.
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