Obstacles will not prevent Palestine from becoming a Jewish Homeland, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency and leader of the world Zionist movement, declared tonight at a dinner tendered him at the Wallorf Astoria Hotel on the occasion of his 71st birthday. A check for $1,000,000 for the Palestine research center which will bear his name was presented to him as a birthday gift.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, in an address delivered over the telephone from Washington, lauded Dr. Weizmann both as a scientist and a statesman and emphasized that “the fulfilment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine, large enough to admit and absorb all those who need it so urgently, without hurt and with the help of all those now dwelling there, is a task laid upon statesmen by the conscience of the world.” He pointed out that “the research center to bear the already historic name of Chaim Weizmann, will be devoted to scientific progress in the fields in which Dr. Weizmann’s labors have been so fruitful.”
More than 2,000 men and women, including some of the country’s outstanding scientists, attended the dinner. Speakers included Prof. Otto Loewi, Nobel Prize winner in Physiology; Prof. Hermann Mark of the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute; Prof. louis F. Fieser of Harvard University; Prof. Israel Wechsler of Columbia University Medical school; Dr. Stephen S. Wise and others.
HOPES TO CREATE HOME FOR JEWISH SCIENTISTS IN PALESTINE
Emphasizing that the Jews are again going through a period of tragedy, Dr. Weizmann said that “it is fitting that we should demonstrate our will to survive and our faith in the future, by the creation of a scientific institute in Palestine.” He acknowledged his indebtedness to a group of American scientists who helped in formulating the plans for the Weizmann Institute of Science, and appealed to Jewish scientists to take part in the research program which, he said, will aid in extending Palestine’s absorptive capacity.
“It is not only a home for scientific research we hope to create in Palestine, but also a home for scientists,” Dr. Weizmann said. “The slaughter of our people in Europe has deprived us of an irreplaceable source of intellectual and spiritual power, and whatever is left we will have to nurse as a precious plant. Wherever there are, or wherever there will be, uprooted, homeless, Jewish scientists, we will give them a place to work and to create, however modest it will be.”
Edmund I. Kaufmann of Washington D.C., president of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science, who presented the $1,000,000 check to Dr. Weizmann, announced that the cornerstone of the new research center will be laid in the Spring of 1946.
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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.
