The necessity of expanding the facilities of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to accommodate part of the thousands of Jewish students in Poland and elsewhere harassed by anti-Semitism and eager to go to Palestine was stressed today by Dr. Hugo Bergmann, its rector, arriving on the Queen Mary for a six weeks’ visit here.
He will address faculty groups of universities and colleges in the United States and Canada and in other ways seek to stir interest in the Hebrew University. It is his first visit to this country and he came at the invitation of the American Friends of the Hebrew University. He is accompanied by his wife.
In an interview on shipboard with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he discussed the needs of the universities and plans for expansion, including the medical center now being built, a proposed agricultural faculty, a possible law faculty and economics department and addition of several new buildings.
He stressed the precarious financial situation of the university, which not only make impossible adequate expansion, but make it difficult to meet current obligations. Laboratory experimentation had to be curtailed for lack of funds, he said. He estimated that $1,000,000 a year was necessary to cover the budget, exclusive of expansion plans.
There are now 731 students and 60 advanced research students at the university, he said, and if the facilities were expanded, place could be made for four or five thousand students.
Mrs. Goldie Myerson, a leader of the Palestine Histadruth, also arrived on the Queen Mary. She will tour the United States in the interest of the seaport at Tel Aviv.
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.
