62nd Annual Hias Convention Urges U.N. to Apportion Pefugee Quotas to Member States

A resolution asking the United Nations to apportion quotas to its member nations for absorption of Europe’s displaced persons and refugees on an equitable, non-sectarian basis was unanimously adopted today by delegates of 3,000 fraternal, labor, and religious organizations at the 62nd annual convention of HIAS. The parley adopted a $4,010,000 budget for 1947.

The convention also voted without dissent to recommend to the United Nations that Palestine be openea to unrestricted Jewish immigration and to ask the United States Congress for legislation to admit “a fair proportion” of Europe’s uprooted peoples into this country. Other resolutions recommended that additional consular facilities and more shipping be allocated to expedite President Truman’s displaced persons program in occupied Germany and Austria and in Shanghai, and endorsed UNRRA and the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees for the “superior manner in which they have served the needs of the war sufferers.”

In his annual address Abrahem Herman, president of the organization, declared that Europe’s displaced persons must be redistributed throughout the world to take their “rightful human places as useful citizens of nations which want them.” He urged that each nation of the world take a share of the displaced, both Jewish and Gentile, commensurate with its present population and natural wealth.

Although only one-fourth of the displaced in Europe are Jews, Herman said, “their homelessness poses an especially poignent problem because the war left a tragic residue of anti-Semitism.” Herman cited reports of new anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, pointing out that “the displaced Jews see no alternative but to emigrate, for they see the too-familiar clouds of hatred of Jews gathering again.” The immediacy of the plight of the DP’s, Mr. Herman went on to assert, is only mocked by well-intentioned programs “which fall cruelly short of their promise.”

Issac L. Asofsky, executive director of RIAS, reported that the agency had succeeded in re-settling and repatriating 23,813 European Jewish survivors during 1946. He estimated that, throughout Europe, excepting the Soviet Union, there are now some 600,000 Jews who wish to emigrate. Of this number, only about 200,000 are in displaced persons camps in occupied Germany and Austria.