J. D. B. News Letter

to be carried on to save the population from starvation, especially the younger people and the children. An English journalist has said, Dr. Wischnitzer recalled, that he was in the famine areas of China and India, and that he was in Germany at the end of 1918 and the beginning of 1919, during the hunger blockade, but that he had never seen famine and privation as bad as in Carpatho-Russia.

The Jews in Lithuania were spared excesses in 1932, he went on, but they continued to be pushed out of their economic positions.

In the United States of America, he proceeded, the economic depression has caused a great deal of impoverishment among the Jewish population, with dire consequences to their relatives in Eastern Europe, for there has been a fall in the financial assistance given by American Jews to their relatives in Eastern Europe, and the flow of funds from America for constructive work in the East European countries has also diminished. But it must be said that in spite of the difficulties of American Jewry, the Joint Distribution Committee continues to do everything possible to alleviate the distress in Eastern Europe, especially in the field of child welfare.

The Ica, too, is continuing its big colonization work in both the Old and the New World, and the Joint-Ica Reconstruction Foundation is carrying on its essential credit aid activities among the Jewish masses in the East of Europe.

In Palestine, Dr. Wischnitzer said, the economic crisis was felt only slightly. In comparison to other countries there is little unemployment in Palestine and in many branches there is even at times a lack of labor. 4,500 immigration certificates were placed at the disposal of the Jewish Agency for the current half-year — October, 1932—March, 1933.

Dr. Wischnitzer emphasized that the bars against immigration both in the Continental and overseas countries had been made more rigorous and emigrant aid and advice, he said, is now more urgently necessary than ever before.