Two dramatic emigration projects, involving the transfer of 426 Jewish orphans from Amsterdam and 2,000 Yemenite Jews from the British Protectorate of Aden, were announced today by the Joint Distribution Committee, which is conducting and bearing the cost of the projects.
The J.D.C. is evacuating the Yemenite refugees from the Hashed camp in Aden by air, owing to the impossibility of securing transit visas through the Moslem countries. Two hundred and fifty Jews of non-military age — orphans, children, woman, and men over 40 — are now making the 1,200-mile airplane trip every week, it was revealed.
(A cable from Tel Aviv said today that a “tragic report on the position of the Jews in Aden” has been received by Israeli authorities. The report appealed for urgent aid for the Jewish community in that area.)
About 90 percent of the Aden camp inmates have spent more than three years awaiting the opportunity to go to Israel; During that time J.D.C. has provided food, clothing, medical aid and special cash grants to the 4,000 Jews fleeing anti-Semitic uprisings in neighboring Yemen. The Central British Fund, an organization which has participated in the relief program to the Aden refugees, cooperated with J.D.C. in arranging the current movement to Israel.
The 426 Jewish orphans, ranging in age from six to 16, sailed as a group on Wednesday for Haifa, the J.D.C. announced. Since November 1947, they had been living as guests of the Dutch Government in a model children’s village established for them by J.D.C. near Apeldoorn. During their ii-month stay, the youngsters, who were brought from displaced persons camps in Germany and from poverty-stricken are as in Rumania, were provided with special diets, medical care, recreation facilities and educational and vocational training by the J.D.C.
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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.
