James G. McDonald, League of Nations High Commissioner for German refugees, was to sail Saturday from New York for Rio de Janeiro to begin a series of conferences with the governments of eight South American countries to admit to those lands a number of Jewish and other refugees over a fixed period of time.
In a statement explaining his mission to South America, Commissioner McDonald emphasized that more than one-third of the total of the refugees from Germany are still unsettled.
“Increasingly, it is recognized that wherever the German refugees are given opportunities to work, they quickly become valuable assets to their new homelands,” the statement reads. “I am hopeful, therefore, that in certain of the countries of South America it will be possible to work out with the governments there a basis for the admission, over a fixed period of time, of limited numbers of the refugees. Many of these are particularly suited for emigration to countries like those in the South which still possess vast undeveloped resources.”
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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.
