A National Resettlement Committee was created here today to promote national settlement of German refugees in uncongested areas in this country.
The action was taken at a special meeting of the National Coordinating Committee for German Refugees in conjunction with the National Conference of Jewish Social Welfare. Attending the meeting were Joseph P. Chamberlain, of President Roosevelt’s Advisory Committee on Political Refugees and William Rosenwald, president of the National Coordinating Committee Fund, Inc.
Prof. Chamberlain gave assurance of the American Government’s cooperation, declaring: “Private organizations, protestant, Jewish, Catholic, interested and active in handling the refugee problem here in America may be assured of full cooperation from the government to facilitate and ease emigration of refugees from central Europe within the framework of existing immigration legislation. This can be done, both here and in 32 other countries interested in this question, without any change in their current immigration policies.”
The action will mean coordinating all regional, local resettlement committees throughout the country.
The threat to democracy and minority groups throughout the world by spread of Nazism was emphasized at the first general session of the conference Friday night by Prof. Chamberlain and Prof. Oscar I. Janowsky, of the City College of New York. Both speakers pointed out that Jews and other minorities, will find safety only in preservation of democracy.
The minority problem “will have a new and dangerous meaning and will have to be met not alone in the United States but in Latin American countries,” Prof. Chamberlain said, if Nazism succeeds in carrying out “threats that it may be extended by propaganda and subvention, though not by force of arms, to the continents of North and South America.”
Harry Greenstein, president, in a statement on the aims of the conference, emphasized the need of relating Jewish social work to growing federal, State and local welfare programs. He urged development of greater Jewish cohesiveness and solidarity in Jewish life.
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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.
