Anglo-american Sub-committee Tours Warsaw Ghetto; Confers with Jewish Leaders

Members of a sub-committee of the Anglo-American Committee on Palestine, which arrived here over the week-end, today toured the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto, and viewed huge open graves containing the carbonized bodies of martyred Jews.

The committee members, several of whom wept as they stood before the graves, suggested that the ruins be preserved intact as evidence that the Jews suffered terrible sacrifices in the battle to destroy Nazism. The people in England and America, they said, had no conception of the heroism and sufferings which the Jews endured.

Later, the sub-committee, headed by Sir John Singleton, co-chairman of the full committee, was received by Foreign Minister Wincenty Raymowski. It will also meet with Minister of Social Welfare Jan Stanczyk and Jacob Berman, adviser to Prime Minister Eduard Osubka-Morawski.

The sub-committee also visited Dr. Emil Sommerstein, chairman of the Central Jewish Committee, who told it that most of the Jews in Poland want to emigrate, because they feel that they are “alone,” rather than for economic reasons. Dr. Sommerstein said that he feels that the only solution for the problem of the Jews is creation of their own state in Palestine.

An official delegation of the Jewish committee called on the sub-committee members, and speaking in behalf of the entire Jewish population, with the exception of the members of the Jewish Socialist Bund, described the tragedy of the Jews of Poland and their desire to settle in Palestine. They also told of the heroism with which the Jews of Poland fought the Nazis. The Jewish spokesman paid tribute to the friendly attitude of the Government and reviewed its efforts to aid Jewish survivors. Questioned by some members as to what from this governmental assistance took, the delegation replied that it was both economic and political.

Accompanying the inquiry group members on their visit to the ghetto site were Louis Segal, general secretary of the Jewish National Workers Alliance in the United States, who is in Poland on behalf of the World Jewish Congress; Dr. Adolph Berman, a Jewish deputy in the Polish National Council; and other local Jewish leaders.

The Anglo-American probers will shortly leave for Lodz where the “League for Working Palestine” plans to organize a street demonstration of all Jews in the city to indicate their desire to go to Palestine.