Unscop Sub-committee Members Impressed with Dp’s Desire to Go to Palestine

With its tour of the DP camps almost half-finished, a sub-committee members of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine tonight prepeared to be in agreement that the survey was “indispensable for the work of UNSCOP.” After visiting Bad Reichenall, near Salzburg, tonight, the sub-committee is expected continue its tour and return to Geneva, where the main body of UNSCOP delegates is (##) on Wednesday.

Even those who were most reluctant to visit the camps are now convinced that to DP problem is one of the more important aspects of the Palestine question. The ??-committee members are deeply impressed with the nearly unanimous desire of the Jewish DP’s to emigrate to Palestine and may be prepared to recommend that something be ?? about it at the earliest possible date.

Although some of the members believe that part of this desire may be due to Zionist indoctrination, the sub-committee is convinced that the refugees’ desire to go Palestine is genuine. In reply to the usual question as to where they wish to go, the DP’s at Bad Reichenhall were unanimous in their response – Palestine. Although it has carefully examined several hundred persons in three camps, the response is al## the same.

At the Landsberg camp, where correspondents were barred during the questioning DP’s on the ground that all such information must first be sent to Geneva, members the sub-committee declared that 80 percent of the refugees wish to go to Palestine, percent to American and 10 percent elsewhere. Committee members refused to see a delegation of displaced Jews who requested a hearing on the grounds that the group’s ## were already prepared, while they wanted to speak to DP’s at random and on an ## basis.

One member of the sub-committee told the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic agency that “I am now convinced that their desire for emigration is not the result of ??”

DP ORPHANS’ CENTER IS WAY STATION EN ROUTE TO PALESTINE

At a DP camp in Indersdorf, Germany, a center for children, of whom 65 percent are orphaned, the sub-committee was informed that 150 children from this camp were on {SPAN}(##){/SPAN} the Exodus. Asked by one of the committee members about life in the camp, one the adult officials replied: “Life is very unstable here. This is a port en route a Palestine. The children feel they are encircled by unfriendliness and hate.

A question as to how the 150 children aboard the Exodus got there evoked the reply: “The children went on a picnic one day and never returned.” In the room where ## sub-committee held its hearing was a black-draped photograph of Zvi Yacubovitch, 15-year-old youth who was killed in the boarding of the Exodus. Underneath it was ## legend: “Our brother and friend – he fell at the gates of Palestine, we shall follow in his steps.”

Earlier during the week-end, Rabbi Philip Bernstein, retiring advisor on Jewish affairs to the US Army, told the sub-committee members at Munich that if the American ? were withdrawn from Germany today, there would be a great danger of pogroms. He also said that there was growing tension between American forces and DP’s, that the “I.R.O. is entering the picture with pennies” and that the JDC is bearing the bur## of supporting the refugees “until it is reaching the cracking point.”