Over 2,000 French Jews liberated from concentration camps in Poland by the Red Army have arrived here from Odessa to where they are taken by Soviet authorities.
They told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that en route from Oswiecim to Messa they stopped in Bucharest where they were warmly welcomed by the Jewish community and given clothes. Among the arrivals is Pierre Karsenti, 32, from Paris, who was one of the few Jews in Europe to have survived two years in Oswiecim. He was deported there in September, 1942.
The S.S. Aschanius, which brought the deportees from Odessa, sailed from here last night carrying 818 Jewish refugees bound for Palestine. About 1,600 children and adults were scheduled to sail, but British visa difficulties delayed 750 who are still in Swiss refugee camps. The emigrants included 533 men and boys and 285 women and girls.
Their departure was a festive occasion, marked by much singing and waving of blue-and-white Zionist banners. Silent, but interested, spectators were German prisioners of war working on the docks. U.S. army officers and representatives of the point Distribution Committee, the Jewish Agency and the Red Cross were on hand, as well as several American Jewish chaplains. The passengers included persons of all ages changing from toddlers to bearded old men.
David Sealtiel, the Jewish Agency representative, expressed his thanks to the allied military and civil agencies for their assistance in providing food, transportation and housing for the refugees. He said that another transport will probably leave next month, consisting of the 750 who were held up in Switzerland and 200 French Jews.
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.
