UJA Mission Hears Final Reports in Geneva; 200 Members Go to Israel

The 200 members of the 12th annual United Jewish Appeal Study Mission left here today for Israel after they were briefed by the top executives of the four migration and welfare agencies supported by UJA funds — the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the United Hias Service and the World Ort Union. They will remain in Israel until October 21, when they return to the United States to report on UJA needs at the organization’s annual meeting in New York, where next year’s campaign goal will be set. The UJA campaign raised about $70,000,000 in 1966.

Addressing a farewell dinner last night given by the JDC, winding up the mission’s four day visit here, Max M. Fisher, of Detroit, general chairman of the UJA, stressed that the four beneficiary welfare and migration agencies were working against time “to put together all the complex things that add up to immigrating people, clothing them, feeding them, teaching them trades — all the things that spell a new chance in life for thousands of Jews in Europe, North Africa and Israel.”

In another address at the dinner, Sir Barnett Janner, Labor member of the British Parliament and former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, recalled the close cooperation between American and British Jewry in the work of saving Jewish lives during the Hitler period.

The mission members also met with Jewish leaders from Switzerland and 14 other European countries. Greetings were extended by Mordechai Kidron, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. headquarters in Geneva; Astorre Mayer, of Milan, chairman of the Standing Conference of European Community Services; H. Oscar Joseph, of London, president of the International Council of Jewish Social and Welfare Services; Dr. Georges Brunschwig, president of the Swiss Union of Jewish Communities; and Grand Rabbi Alexander Safran, of Geneva.