President Roosevelt’s Committee Receives Memorandum on Jewish Rescue Work

The United Jewish Appeal today submitted to the President’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees a memorandum describing the activities supported by American Jews to rescue vast numbers of victims of ten years of Hitlerism.

The document charting the course of relief and reconstruction measures taken by Jews in the United States during “a decade of doom and disaster” stressed the importance of the achievements of the Joint Distribution Committee, United Palestine Appeal and National Refugee Service. It emphasizes that since Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany, the J.D.C. made possible the emigration of 260,000 refugees from Europe to the Western Hemisphere and Palestine, including 125,000 to Central and South American countries. At the same time the U.P.A. arranged the emigration and settlement in Palestine of 305,000 refugees from Europe, while the major portion of the 250,000 refugees of all creeds who entered the United States since 1933 received assistance from the N.R.S.

Declaring that the Jews have experienced ten bitter years during which 2,000,000 have fallen, “many in unmarked, mass graves,” the memorandum states that American Jews stand ready to welcome new responsibilities and opportunities for reconstruction that will result from increasing Allied victories. “As they served during the decade of destruction, so they now dedicate themselves to serve in the years of reconstruction in order that the Jewish people may share in the rebuilding of a world in which Hitlerism or any imitation of it shall never rise again to mar the peace of mankind,” the document asserts.