The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration will probably not make any provisions for special handling of Jewish war victims in liberated territories, according to information available here today. The UNRRA sub-committee on Social-Welfare policies, to which several pleas for recognition of the Jewish relief problem as such have been submitted, has decided not to include a recommendation for special treatment for Jews in Europe in its final report.
Early in the council’s session here, the Jewish Labor Committee, headed by Adolph Held, asked that “special and extraordinary measures” be taken in behalf of Jewish war victims, and that a separate branch be established for that purpose. Later, the World Jewish Congress, through Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Dr. Nahum Goldmann, asked recognition of “a central Jewish body, internationally organized, as an integral part of the post-war relief and rehabilitation machinery.” They suggested that their organization would be competent to serve such a purpose.
The Jewish Labor Committee also requested a hearing on the subject, but Council Chairman Acheson, told Held that no requests for hearings had been received and the Council’s time was so limited that it had been “compelled, reluctantly,” to take the position that none could be granted. “We are more than sympathetic with the problems that you have presented,” he added, however, “and your letter will be referred to the appropriate authorities, where it will be given careful consideration.”
Both requests were referred to the subcommittee on Social-Welfare Policies, because its jurisdiction also includes UNRRA relations with voluntary relief agencies. Jan Kwapinski, of Poland, whose delegation includes a strong unofficial Jewish contingent, is chairman of the committee, and Harry Greenstein, of Baltimore, Md., on loan from the Associated Jewish Charities to the U.S. Secretariat, is secretary.
The subcommittee’s decision is the outcome of friendly debate between two schools of thought, both equally sympathetic to Jewish needs, but differing as to methods of meeting them. One, which includes the Jewish Labor Committee and the World Jewish Congress, fears that routine methods, applicable to all afflicted populations, will prove highly inadequate so far as the Jews are concerned. The other, which has prevailed, feels that appropriate plans for dealing with special Jewish problems can be worked out within each afflicted nation – and that for UNRRA to undertake to give them extraordinary treatment might, in the long run, react to the Jews’ own disadvantage.
Aware that the subcommittee probably would rule against them, spokesmen for some of the members of the first school of thought said today that they intended to continue the fight at the general-committee, and also that they would make every effort to have the Jewish question raised before the council itself if necessary.
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