Miss Henrietta Szold, founder and honorary president of Hadassah sailed at noon yesterday on the French liner Lafayette, after spending a month in this country to foster interest in the Youth Aliyah, through which Jewish adolescents are transferred from Germany to the agricultural colonies of Palestine. Miss Szold is the director of the movement, with headquarters in Jerusalem.
During her visit here, the first in five years, the veteran Zionist leader’s seventy-fifth birthday, which occurred on Dec. 21, was widely celebrated throughout the country. She spoke before numerous Jewish and non-Jewish groups on the work of the Youth Aliyah, which Hadassah has undertaken as its new project in Palestine in addition to maintaining medical and public health work there.
Miss Szold will stop in Paris for a few days before resuming her trip to Palestine. In the French capital she will confer with Jewish leaders to facilitate the transfer of German refugee children now in France.
Before sailing Miss Szold expressed her appreciation of American “receptiveness” to the Youth Aliyah undertaking. Her final statement was issued through the Hadassah headquarters after the Lafayette sailed, in order to avoid interviews at the steamer.
Miss Szold said:
“At the moment of leaving my American home to return to my Palestinian home in which the tasks await me that I have been privileged to bring before my friends and associates, and by the courtesy of the press before a wider public, I am impelled to express my appreciation for the opportunities offered to me during my brief stay in the United States to describe what has been achieved in the matter of removing Jewish boys and girls from Germany to Palestine, for them the land of freedom and promise.
“Still more important was the opportunity to outline the great need that remains to be satisfied and to win the cooperation of the American forces that work for light, liberty and happiness. I hope to be able, during my two-day stay in France, a country that opened its doors hospitably to the reception of German refugees to function as the interpreter of the Jewish youth movement to Palestine. The children of the German refugees in France are waiting for their transfer to Palestine as their permanent abode. I have no doubt that the French public will be as receptive as the American to the stimulus that flows from this unique colonization idea.
“In Palestine, which I expect to reach early in February, I shall arrive, I hope, in time to greet several groups of German adolescents, to the number of about 100, for whom places have been prepared in the rural settlements; in time also to participate in the permanent settlement of the first group which is to leave its foster home after two years of education in order to enter upon an independent, self-sufficient life for which its members have been prepared.”
This group, Miss Szold said, consists of 59 boys and girls in the colony Ain Harod. Of these, 42 have selected agriculture as their vocation, and will establish a cooperative colony of their own.
The Hadassah headquarters announced that Hadassah chapters have purchased more than 1,000 trees through the Jewish National Fund as a birthday gift to Miss Szold. The trees will be planted on the grounds of the Rothschild-Hadassah-University Hospital, the medical center which Hadassah and the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee will build on Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem. The National Board of Hadassah presented Miss Szold with $5,000 for the establishment of model kitchens in three or four Palestinian colonies.
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.
