Over 1,600 refugee Jews from all parts of Europe, most of whom have spent years in German concentration camps, sailed from here today for Palestine.
A pre-departure dinner for the emigrants, last night, was dramatically interrupted when the refugees discovered in their midst three persons who had collaborated with the Nazis, and were attempting to flee to Palestine to escape punishment. Only the intervention of Capt. Abel Rosenberg, a French Maquis leader who was in charge of the camp where the refugees were housed pending their departure, saved the three from violence. Capt. Rosenberg announced that they would be turned over to the proper authorities and charged with being war criminals.
Among the passengers was David Frankfurter, who was released from a Swiss prison several weeks ago after serving nine years of an 18-year sentence for assassinating Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff. Frankfurter told a JTA correspondent that he was leaving Europe because he thought Palestine was the only possibility for the surviving Jews of that continent. He said that he does not plan to resume his medical studies which were interrupted when he was imprisoned, as he has forgotten too much, and had not yet decided what he would do. Frankfurter thought he might visit America, but declared that he had no desire to settle there. His brother, Dr. Alphonso Frankfurter, was also among the emigrants. He was recently liberated from a prisoner-of-war camp.
Among the pre-departure festivities and ceremonies were songs and dnaces around the camp fires last night and services in the Marseille Synagogue today. All the Jewish relief officials handling the transfer of the 1,600 emigrants had high praise for the cooperation of the American, British and French authorities involved.
(The French steamer “Ville Doran” today decked at Hiafa bringing 700 Jewish refugees who lived in Switzerland and Italy, many of whom had previously been held in the Bergen-Belzen concentration camp in Germany.)
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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.
