The office of the Joint Distribution Committee here announced today that it has arranged for the sailing from Lisbon on Oct. 25th of the Portuguese liner, Serpa Pinto, which will carry between six and seven hundred refugees proceeding to new homes in North and South America.
From Lisbon, the vessel will proceed to Casablanca where it will pick up the last 200 refugees who sailed from Marseille last Spring and have been detained in North African internment camps ever since, as well as about 75 more emigrants from unoccupied France who were unable to obtain Spanish transit visas. These are proceeding to Casablanca to board the ship there. With the sailing of this ship, all the Jewish refugees who were stranded at Casablanca when the three French ships on which they were travelling were forbidden to complete their scheduled sailings will have been enabled to proceed on their way.
The refugees are being assembled for the trip from Casablanca, Marseille, Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam, Prague, Luxemburg and Spain. After calling at Ciudad Trujillo, the Serpa Pinto will put in at Havana, Vera Cruz, Mexico, and New York.
The Joint Distribution Committee made arrangements for the special sailing of the ship in consultation with the Hicem which will handle the emigration of about 350 of the passengers from Marseille and Casablanca. This will be the first liner ever to sail from a Portuguese port to the Dominican Republic. The Serpa Pinto will carry between one hundred and one hundred and fifty relatives of Jewish settlers and other refugees who have obtained visas for residence in the Caribbean republic.
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