Refusal of the German Government to permit inclusion of Jews in plans for Quaker relief in Poland has resulted in a hitch in the negotiations being conducted by representatives of the American Friends Service Committee in Berlin, it was learned today. The Nazis have, however, apparently yielded to demands for impartial relief as far as children are concerned, it was understood.
Clarence E. Pickett, director of the Committee, who visited Washington yesterday, later told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Washington bureau by telephone from Philadelphia that the Quaker relief organization had refused to continue relief operations in Poland unless they could be administered without regard to race and religion.
Pickett said that Quaker relief work in Poland had been stalled for several weeks because of the insistence of the Nazis that all supplies be distributed through Nazi channels. “This meant that Jews would be excluded from receiving aid,” he said. “We would not accept this.”
There is a great deal of distress in Warsaw, according to a cable received by the Quaker organization from Homer T. Morris, its Berlin representative, who reached Amsterdam yesterday. Morris cabled that the Nazi forces of occupation were making no attempt to aid starving or sick Jews, although they were attempting to care for other Polish citizens.
Negotiations have been resumed between the Quaker organization and Nazi officials, Morris cabled, with the Nazis apparently yielding to a few of the Quaker demands that relief be given to all alike.
The American Friends’ Service Committee is ready to begin distribution of cod liver oil and milk among children in stricken Polish areas if the Nazis will allow Jewish children as well as non-Jews to receive this aid, Pickett said.
Further representatives of the American Friends’ Service Committee were scheduled to sail for Europe from New York today. (A three-man mission, representing the Commission for Polish Relief, was to sail on the Italian liner Rex for Berlin to complete negotiations with the German Government. Two of its members are Quakers, J. Edgard Rhoads and Arthur Gamble, the third being Frederic C. Walcott, treasurer of the commission.)
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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.
