The Polish and Israeli Governments have reached an agreement for the transfer of hundreds of Jewish war orphans from Poland to Israel, Moshe Kol, director of the Youth Aliyah, revealed here today.
Mr. Kol added that Israel intends to press for similar agreements with other Eastern European governments. He estimated that there were some 1,500 Jewish children in orphanages in these countries. Mr. Kol reported that some of the Polish Jewish children who are already in Israel have presented the child rescue movement with problems, including the fact that they were educated to be citizens of the “new Poland” and that they know nothing of Judaism.
Oriental children also present problems for Israel, he said, because in the countries from which they come agriculture is looked down upon as among the lowest of pursuits. Both the children and their parents, he continued, feel that the children should be busy earning money as soon as they are physically able, a view which has given Youth Aliyah and other child welfare authorities a headache.
The number of schools for maladjusted children has decreased, Mr. Kol reported, chiefly because of selective immigration. Where Israel accepts an entire Jewish community, it takes the healthy and the ill, he noted, but from countries where there is no mass emigration, maladjusted children are not taken. Israel cannot afford to act as a “hospital for the Jewish people,” he declared.
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