Predicting that the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency will probably have to assume responsibility for every phase of the existence of all Jews in Europe “with the exception of one or two countries,” the World Jewish Congress today addressed an appeal to the United Nations asking them to include Jewish representatives in the relief machinery.
“In view of the enormous tasks of relief in the places where Jews are concentrated, it is providential that the occupying forces are likely to find capable local assistance in Europe and qualified representatives of the European Jews abroad. It must be part of the Allied plan to prepare for their utilization now,” the appeal says.
Emphasizing that in every country that the United Nations liberate there will be special Jewish problems created by Nazi methods, the appeal points out that “it is obvious that relief work cannot be delayed until the Jews in internment camp: and ghettos are resettled in the place they originally came from.”
“These hapless prisoners of Hitler, a large part of them torn away from their families and their useful occupations, will have to be fed, clothed, properly housed, and prepared for normal peacetime employment at once, wherever they will be found,” the appeal says. “While the war continues it will be difficult to break up the centers of Jewish enforced residence and return the uprooted Jews to their original homes and occupations. Many of them were deported from one end of Axis Europe to the other. This is particularly true of the Jews of the largest and most terrible prison of all; the occupied area of East Central Europe – Central Poland, Galicia, White Russia, and the Ukraine.”
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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.
