Abel Shaban, president of the executive of the World OSE Union, accompanied by the Union’s medical director, Dr. H. Fajerman, and J. Shaban, president of the OSE in Morocco, conferred with the Governor General of Morocco on the work of the OSE in that country and on the health problems of the Jewish population of that North African protectorate, a communique from OSE headquarters here announced today.
Later, the communique declared, Mr. Shaban conferred with the French Minister for Public Health and Social Welfare. Following this interview, Mr. Shaban praised the cooperation and assistance of the French authorities in alleviating the misery of the Jews living in the mellahs–ghettos–of North Africa.
Reporting on the mellahs, which he called “hell on earth” and “living cemeteries,” the South African Jewish leader said that between 60 and 70 percent of the total Jewish population of Morocco live in the mellahs. The poverty and sickness which exists in the mellahs, he continued, are “unbelievable and indescribable.”
The Jewish world, Mr. Shaban said, is doing much to relieve the misery of these Jews, but this assistance is by no means commensurate with the great need prevailing in the North African countries. In order to take care of these Jews, world Jewry must make an effort of the same magnitude as that made in behalf of Jewish displaced people at the end of World War II.
Terming the present effort in behalf of the North African Jews as “nothing but a drop in the ocean,” Mr. Shaban called for the creation of a coordinating board in each of the countries of North Africa in which Jews live–to be composed of OSE, ORT, Alliance Israelite Universelle and Joint Distribution Committee–to plan and direct work on the scene. Such coordinating units must also develop local leadership from among the mellah Jews, he noted.
Praising the ORT, Alliance, JDC and OSE for performing a “most useful national task,” the world OSE leader said that the Jewish health society was doing a “super-human job.” Only those who could see the OSE’s work on the spot could possibly “imagine the extent and scope” of its activities, he added. The OSE was in the vanguard in saving human lives and in laying the foundations of a future healthy generation, he concluded.
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