Secretary of State George C. Marshall was urged to ask Confess for a $50,000,000 appropriation for the International Refugee Organization to help speed the mass resettlement of 100,000 displaced persons in Israel. In a message to Marshall, Stanley C. Nyers, president of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, said that such action would further the interests of the United States and would also be an “act to humanity.”
Pointing out that after a seven-week tour of DP camps in Germany, Austria and Italy, Harold Glasser, director of the organization’s Institute on Overseas Studies, reported that 100 DP camps in western Germany could be closed within a year if the necessary funds were available, Myere asserted that “our government should reconsider the I.B.O. request (for a voluntary contribution from the U.S. of $71,000,000) in the light of the emergence of the immediate opportunity to resettle more than 100,000 displaced persons in the shortest possible time in Israel.”
The message also urged the State Department “to use its influence with the I.R.O.” to impress upon that organization the importance of reaching “an immediate agreement with the government of Israel” for the proposed resettlement. “The recent decision announced by I.R.O. that it could not recognize or sponsor the movement of displaced persons to Israel, is, in our opinion, unjustified legally and contrary to the very constitution of the I.R.O.,” the statement said.
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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.
