A concrete program for dealing with the German-Jewish situation was worked out by a special committee today for presentation to the Eighteenth World Zionist Congress.
The political and economic aspects of the German situation in the light of the special committee’s findings, will be presented to the congress by Dr. Sokolow and by Dr. Arthur Ruppin, agricultural and colonization expert.
Dr. Sokolow will deal with the political situation and Dr. Ruppin, who recently completed a trip through Germany surveying conditions, will take up the economic questions involved. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, former president of the World Zionist Organization, whose return to the helm of Zionist affairs is freely predicted, was to have addressed the congress on the German situation, but his name has been removed from the speakers’ list as it is understood he will not attend the Congress.
The special committee, which was appointed at a preliminary meeting of the Actions Committee of the World Zionist Organization, will, in its recommendations to the congress, point out the need for taking 250,000 Jews out of Germany, it was learned today. Of these, in Dr. Ruppin’s belief, 100,000 can be settled in Palestine. The remainder would have to be distributed among other countries.
AMERICAN SEATS CONTESTED
The right of the American delegation to its seats in the Congress was the subject of strong debate before the congress court today as the Hadassah, women’s Zionist organization which formed a coalition with the General Zionists in the United States in the Congress elections, demanded the entire twenty-nine seats.
The Hadassah protested that the elections were not conducted according to agreed procedure which resulted in a heavy setback for the coalition General-Zionist ticket at the expense of the Zionist Laborites. One of the Hadassah arguments was that most of the Hadassah members were deprived of their vote through the failure of election officials to establish a voting place in Hadassah headquarters as previously agreed.
LABOR DEMANDS VOICED
A new constitution for the World Zionist Organization to enable its executive body to expell undisciplined groups from the organization or deprive them of their share of Palestine immigration certificates will be one of the demands that the Laborites will make at the congress, it was learned today. The demand was made by David Ben-Gurion, Palestine Labor leader and member of the Jewish Agency Palestine exexutive, addressing the meeting of the Labor fraction which will be the largest in the congress.
A difference in opinion in Labor ranks over the tactics to be employed against the Revisionists, extreme right-wing Zionists, was revealed in Ben-Gurion’s speech, the leader expressing himself as opposed to expelling the Revisionists from the Congress. The Laborites had previously voted for a coalition executive excluding the Revisionists and had forced through a motion for an investigation of Revisionist activities.
DENOUNCES REVISIONISTS
Terming Revisionism “Hitlerite pseudo-Zionism,” Ben-Gurion desribed the Laborite fight against it as “a fight for life and death in the strongest sense of the word.”
He strongly denounced the Revisionists of Poland saying that Vladimir Jabotinsky, Revisionist leader, had obtained 48,000 votes there by terroristic methods.
Ben-Gurion sounded the key-note of the Laborite ambition when he declared that the Zionist Labor Party no longer wishes to be considered a fraction of the Zionist organization but the leading power within it. The Laborite delegates constitute 44 percent of the entire congress.
Joseph Sprinzak, Palestine Labor leader, presided at the conference. His entire audience arose as he launched into an eloquent eulogy of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff.
GENERAL ZIONISTE CONFER
A demand that the League of Nations and Great Britain, the mandatory power, should take steps to enable immediate and systematic financial assistance in carrying out the terms of the Palestine mandate and in helping persecuted Jewries was voiced at the second world conference of General Zionists which has been in session for the last three days with delegates from all parts of the world in attendance.
The abolition of Palestine immigration restrictions, transfer of immigration direction to the hands of the Jewish Agency and the opening of the Transjordan for Jewish colonization and enterprise were advocated by Ignacy Schwartzbart, of Galicia, who presided at the conference.
Protests when Schwartzbard opened the conference speaking in Yiddish resulted in his vacating of the chair in favor of Dr. B. Z. Mossinsohn of Palestine, who spoke in Hebrew. Thereafter, Yiddish and Hebrew both were used in the discussion. The language question arose in the present congress for the first time as in previous years, German was used.
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.
