Plans for settlement of at least 600,000 Jewish families in one territory, financed on a business basis by an international loan secured by a “Jewish National Treasury,” were outlined at a press conference tonight by Daniel Wolf, Netherlands Jewish banker and philanthropist who founded the International Jewish Colonization Society. For Mr. Wolf, who came here earlier this week from London to continue discussions on the financing of his plan, this was the first discussion of the scheme at a press conference.
The Society, he said, aims to find one large territory able to absorb from 600,000 to 1,000,000 Jewish families, first from Germany, but later from Poland and Rumania. Admitting the difficulty of finding such a territory for compact settlement, he disclosed that negotiations had been started with two governments for such land. his plan for a single territory, Mr. Wolf declared, are contrary to those of George Rublee, director of the Intergovernmental Refugee Bureau, with whom he conferred in London. Mr. Rublee’s plans envisioned dispersion of the Jews into different territories. This, the banker said, represented the principal differences between him and Mr. Rublee.
Mr. Wolf expressed readiness to coordinate the Society’s work with that of leading Jewish relief organizations, but said that under no circumstances would he permit the Society to be swallowed by them. Similarly, he declared, while he agreed to cooperate with the Zionist Organization regarding definite Palestine colonization, he would not consider Palestine as occupying first place in his projects since the holy land could not absorb the 600,000 families which the society had set as a minimum number for settlement.
While saying he was unaware of the maximum funds that his organization could raise, Mr. Wolf declared he intended to call for the raising of a “Jewish National Treasury” of unlimited millions of pounds sterling on the basis of which he believed an international Jewish colonization loan could be obtained so that the entire scheme would eventually be conducted not on a philanthropic but a business basis. two leading Netherlands colonization experts, Professors Moresc and B. Schrieke, were working out technical details of the projects, he said.
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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.
