Plight of Russian Jewish Refugees in Germany Will Be Presented to League

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

An appeal to the League of Nations concerning the plight of the Russian Jewish refugees in Germany will be submitted by the Union of Russian Jews in Germany. Mr. J. L. Teitel, president of the Union declared in an interview in the “Rul,” Russian daily in Berlin.

“Berlin,” he said, “has become the refugees’ cemetery. In spite of the economic depression prevailing since 1923, Germany is an important centre for refugees, even those who intend to go further west being obliged to make a more or less prolonged stay here. Those who succeed in leaving Germany have always some asset or other, be it health, courage or pecuniary resources. Those who remain are the more unfortunate refugees — the sick, those with large families, those whose courage has been sapped by their trials.

“The Russian and Russian-Jewish organizations of Berlin have a most difficult problem to solve. What is to be the fate of the refugees? There are,” he declared, “only two alternatives: the Emperor Caligula’s idea, the wish that the mass of refugees had but one head, which could be felled at a stroke, or a genuine means of preventing them from starvation to death.

“It is by now a crime to give way to fond illusions and to imagine that ‘everything will be settled somehow.’ All who are interested in the cause must be told that the charitable organizations find it absolutely impossible to be of any real assistance to the refugees. The Union of Russian Jews, in spite of its activities and its income of 150,000 marks cannot satisfy 5 per cent of the real need. Besides, all those in distress do not apply to the organizations.” Mr. Teitel stated he knows families who are dying of hunger and refuse to reveal their destitution. “What Berlin can do is not enough; help is needed on a state scale, on an international scale. An appeal for this must be broadcast throughout the world,” Mr. Teitel declared.

Mr. Teitel, accompanied by Mr. A. Goldenweiser, the Director of the Legal Section of the Union, is proceeding to Geneva. They will present particulars of the material and legal situation of the refugees to the League of Nations through the International Labor Office. Mr. Albert Thomas, Director of the International Labor Office, in an interview granted to a delegation from the Union, when he was in Berlin suggested that a written report be submitted to him in Geneva, and promised to support the applications made to Dr. Nansen, the High Commissioner of the League.

Correspondence made public by New York members of the Alumni Association disclosed that Dr. Walter B. Greenway. Pastor of Bethany Temple Congregation Church, Philadelphia, had declined the Presidency of Lincoln University, a Negro institution.

Friends of Dr. Greenway stated that he had made known his intention of refusing the Presidency before students and alumni protested against his selection, declaring him to be a Klan sympathizer.