Eight leaders of the Jewish community, headed by Moshe Shertok, Dr. Bernard Joseph and Itzhak Gruenbaum of the Jewish Agency executive, were released today from the Latrun detention camp, where they had been held since June 29. At the same time 120 other Jewish prisoners were freed from the Raffa camp.
Those released from Latrun included David Remez, Histadruth leader and chairman of the Jewish National Council; David Ha’Cohen, head of the Solel Boneh, Histadruth construction cooperative; David Shingarevsky, an official of the Agency; Mordechai Shatner, a Labor Party leader and Joseph Shoffman, a Revisionist leader.
At the same time, the High Commissioner announced that an amnesty had been granted to 20 Arab leaders, including several exiled on the Seychelle Islands in the Indian Ocean since 1937 for organizing terrorism in Palestine. Two of the exiles, Musa Abdul Husseini and Salin Husseini, are cousins of the ex-Mufti.
FAMILIES, FRIENDS GREET RELEASED MEN AT LATRUN GATES
Shortly after dusk, when an official communique was released giving the text of the announcement in Commons by Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech-Jones that the Jewish leaders were to be freed, their families, as well as members of the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Council and the Histadruth executive, gathered outside the Latrun camp.
Inside the camp, the men who were to be released addressed an informal meeting of the other prisoners, assuring them that they would fight to free all of them, so that “there should be no Jewish political detainees in the Jewish homeland.”
They then entered cars furnished by the police which took them out of the camp precincts. However, as soon as the cars passed the gates, they alighted and were surrounded by their families and friends and photographers.
Remez left immediately for his home in Tel Aviv, while the Agency chiefs went to the Jerusalem headquarters of the Agency where a huge crowd awaited them.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
