News Brief

Today numerous elements are entering Palestine and are not suited psychologically and technically for the life awaiting them there. Absorption of such elements obviously presents great difficulties, the report stated. Youths between the ages of sixteen and thirty constitute the best and most suitable elements for Palestine immigration. In the second category are persons possessing £3,000 and upwards for investment in agricultural, industrial and commercial enterprises, but one of the principal problems in present day Palestine is the absorption of the refugees of the older generation, who have approximately £1,000 but are untrained in agricultural crafts and are too old to learn new methods of earning a livelihood.

The report also stressed the disastrous economic condition of the Jews in Poland and said that the Jewish Agency has already gone the limit in alloting one-third of the total immigration certificates for Palestine in 1933 to the German Jews.

German Jewish immigrants to Palestine may be divided into four classes, the report points out: children under eighteen; those between eighteen and thirty without means; those between eighteen and thrity, who possess from £1,000.

Up to the present work for the refugees has been conducted on the basis of the above aclssifications. The work for the children is being carried out under the direction of Henricetta Szold, American Hadassah leader. After prolonged negotiations with the government of Paletestine, 350 certifucates have been issued for refugee children and they will arrive in Palestine shortly. Together with the children arriving with their parents, who number 600, they will be absorbed in the exitsting school settlements, which others will be sent to private families. The report state that most, if not all th children, will be placed on the land. In additon to the usual school eduction they will be trained in agritculture in order to qualify them for farming.

A second category, which includes thousands of young people with six months of training for settlement in Palestine, could be absorbed in existing settlements, the report says, provided the necessary means for their absorptions and for the constuction of housing and accommodation is made availble. The third category of youths who have some means would be enabled to build small houses and settle in the small towns and another group of refugees who have £400 of capital could be taken into the kvutzoth, cooperative colonies, in addition to establishing new colonies for them on land be longing to the Jewish National Fund.

LAND PURCHASE DEALS ON

Present plans for the refugee work as outlined in the report include the settlement of twenty-five families on National Fund land in Haifa Bay as small holding settlers; fifty farms in the Wadi Hawareth; fifty units near Haifa; ninety new settlers near Recoboth, and further small settlements in districts where Jewish settlements already exist. Negotiations for the purchase of this land are now going on. Similar plans for land settlement, already partly executed were made for the refugees who conre under the fourth category, the report stated.

Immigrants from Germany, who are over thirty and possess no capital and no special qualifications cannot be absorbed in Palestine unl’ess specific openings for the work they did in Germany are found. However, there are openings for qualified craftsmen and small industrialists for whom small loans of twenty-five or fifty pounds would help through the initial period of adjustment, and the sum of ???5,000 has been set aside for such loans.

Capitalist immigrants who possess more than ???3,000 will find many opportunities in Palestine, according to the report, and a special office has been opened in Jerusalem coordinating the work of various inquiry bureaus. Efficient information bureaus with corresponding bureaus in Germany are already in the process of formation.

The problem of the German Jewish scientists and” research workers who were exiled, can be solved in Palestine only to a limited extent and the Weizmann group, although its funds are intended primarily for agricultural and urban settlement, has granted subsides to scientific institutions in Palestine to enable them to help German scientist refugees.

German refugeed who have been unable to find suitable occupations or emplyment in Palestine are being given modest relief and termporary barracks to meet the housing shortage are being erected.

The commission received 121,001] pounds in 1933, tire report states; ???50,000 from England; ???14,600 from the United States; and i350 from Canada.

The 1934 budget of the cornmisj sion provides for the collection of ???250,000, of which i50,000 will be used for urban settlement and industrial credit; ???40,000 for training youths and the balance for temporary housing and the maintenance of the refugees during their first few months in Palestine.

In order lo secure such 3 sum as that proposed in the budget, it is essential that world Jewry continue and even increase support for German Jewish settlement, the report concludes, expressing the hope that the present United Palestine dri??? in the United States would bring-HP at least ???100,000 for the current budget of the Zionist commission for settling German Jewish refugees in Palestine.