Pell Visits Berlin to Press Emigration Plan; Commissions Completing Surveys

Stopping off here on his way to Berlin, Robert T. Pell, vice-director of the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee, declared today that the Rublee agreement on orderly emigration of refugees from Germany involved a “long business affair which will require time and patience” to carry out.

Mr. Pell outlined the following four-fold purpose of his trip to Berlin, which is expected to last a week: (1) to complete certain plans resulting from the Rublee pact; (2) possibly to take up with the German Government the question of the Jews of former Czechoslovakia; (3) to inform the Nazis of the Intergovernmental Committee’s progress in finding lands for Jewish immigration; (4) to ascertain the steps undertaken by the Berlin Government in forming a fund, to be administered by German trustees and one non-German, for the purpose of facilitating emigration of Jews with their equipment.

The fund will consist of 25 per cent of the Jewish wealth in Germany, not ten per cent as some newspapers quoted Lord Winterton, chairman of the committee, as having said last week. This sum will not include the capital and valuables confiscated from Jews under the Goering decree. In connection with Mr. Pell’s trip, it was learned that this fund, as well as the projected International Refugee Settlement Corporation which will advance loans for overseas settlement of refugees, is well under way. Creation of both, it was understood, will be announced simultaneously.

According to information received by the Intergovernmental Committee, the two experts’ missions sent to British Guiana and the Dominican Republic have completed their investigations. Two other missions, to the Philippines and Northern Rhodesia, will soon be ready with their reports on refugee settlement possibilities in those territories.