Passover will be ushered in tomorrow night by millions of Jews throughout the world, including tens of thousands of refugees and DP’s for whom this will be the first Passover celebration in over a decade.
The Joint Distribution Committee has announced that over 2,000,000 pounds of Passover supplies have already been distributed to refugee and displaced Jews in Europe, North Africa, the Near East, and Shanghai. More than 1,600,000 of this total was shipped directly from the United States, and the remainder was purchased with American funds.
American serviceman will observe traditional Passover services and will be provided with Passover food due to efforts by the Jewish Welfare Board. The organization prepared and shipped cases of Passover food, haggadist, greeting cards, leaflets, and recorded greetings, which will be distributed by Army and Navy chaplains and by J.W.B. field representatives. In addition to matzohs and wine the servicemen will receive canned gefilte fish, canned chicken, matzoh meal, salami, cheese, borscht, potato pancake flour, and macaroons.
In a special Passover message to the Jews in DP camps in Germany and Austria, which will be broadcast tomorrow morning, Dr. Israel Goldstein, in behalf of the American Jewish Conference, will pledge the determination of American Jewry “to do everything in our power to bring about a positive solution of the problems which face you.”
Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, president of the Zionist Organization of America, has issued a Passover message to American Jewry saying: “Not for decades has the great commemoration of our escape from the house of bondage in Mizrayim been so profound a personal experience of every true Jew still alive in the world as in this year.”
The Synagogue Council of America in a Passover message emphasized that “this year we have good reason to be thankful for the victory of the Allies over the Nazi beast who defied human decency, challenged the laws of God and men, and endeavored to revive the most degrading practices of savagery and paganism.”
American participation in the Jewish National Fund, which is expected to amount to $24,000,000 in investments in Palestine lands this year, was stressed by Judge Morris Rothenberg, president of the J.N.F. in America, as an important factor in resettling Europe’s liberated Jews in Palestine. “Celebrating Passover, the first festival of freedom in recorded history, American Jews must rededicate themselves” to this task, he declared.
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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.
