South African Jewry Continues Assistance for Colonization Work

(J. T. A. Mail Service)

The first annual Conference of the Jewish Colonization Fund was held here yesterday. R. Feldman presided. S. Raphaely, president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Dr. Leon Bramson, representative of the Ort headquarters in Europe, addressed the sessions. About sixty delegates were present.

The report of the Executive Committee for the period January 1926 to November 30, 1927, submitted to the Conference, points out that the main object of the Executive had been to make South African Jewry acquainted with the movement and to organize Jewish public opinion for the purpose of rendering immediate assistance to the Jews in Russia. The Executive reported that after two years of intensive propaganda work, the aims and objects of the Fund were fairly well known to South African Jewry.

The report refers to the Zionist opposition to the work, and deals with the negotiations with Dr. Leon Bramson on the participation of the Colonization Fund with Dr. Bramson’s Reconstruction Campaign that has now been concluded, according to which the arrangement with the Ort Organization on the division of the collections made for the Campaign and the share to be given to Jewish colonization in Russia, is still pending final decision.

The controversy over the Russian colonization project which raged two years ago, re-echoed during the proceedings of the conference and was given expression by Mr. Raphaely. He quoted Col. Leopold Amery, British Colonial Secretary, who had stated on a visit here that when the matter of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine was brought up, they realized that a small percentage of the Jewish people could go to Palestine and the object of the British government was to enable the Jews all over the world to live as they wanted to live. Mr. Raphaely said he could not see why South African Zionists were opposed to the colonization plan.

Dr. Leon Bramson welcomed the Conference in the name of the Ort. He had just returned from his tour of South Africa, he said, and be had found that a great portion of South African Jewry did not understand the movement that was taking place in far-off Russia. Dr. Bramson described the progress of the Jewish colonies in Russia in 1927.