Zionist Training Work Continues in Soviet and Nazi-held Lands

Zionist activities are being conducted in Soviet and Nazi occupied territories despite arrests of Zionist leaders, it was revealed today by the Jewish Agency office here.

Information obtained by the Agency from various occupied countries disclosed in Soviet-occupied Poland, where Zionist work has been declared illegal, many underground meetings of the Hechalutz are taking place and practical plans discussed. The same is true in Soviet-occupied Lithuania and Latvia, where the Hechalutz movement has also been prohibited. Many members of the Hechalutz and of other Zionist groups who crossed from Nazi-held Poland into Soviet-controlled Baltic countries have been arrested and deported to the Urals. This, however, did not affect the Hechalutz underground work, the report states.

In Nazi-occupied Poland, the Hechalutz movement is still working legally. Some fifteen Hechalutz centers still exist and the work there goes on unmolested. With the Jews prohibited to use trains, the Hechalutz instructors travel by horse and wagon to the various Hechalutz settlements to direct the training there. There is, however, an acute Shortage of food in all the Hechalutz colonies and it often happens that after a day’s hard labor the chalutzim must go to bed without having eaten all day.

In Czechoslovakia, there are 60 Hechalutz training centers in which 6,000 chalutzim are being trained for farm work. The Hechalutz training work is also being conducted legally in Slovakia, though no conference of the Hechalutz organizations is permitted.

In Holland and in Denmark the Hechalutz work has not ceased with the Nazi occupation, but the Palestine instructors there have been arrested and interned in Nazi concentration camps in Germany.