A “city of Jewish children,” about 2,000 in number, are imprisoned behind barbed wire in Cyprus detention camps to which the British Government has been sending Jews attempting to enter Palestine, it was reported today at an emergency conference called by Hadassah at Hotel Pierre. Unless they are removed at once, they will constitute a “lost generation of Jewish youth,” 300 district chairman of the organization were told.
The report on Cyprus was made by Mrs. David de Sola Pool, Hadassah leader, who visited detention camps there last month. “Though the British permit Cyprus inmates to run their own services, prepare their food, and arrange for work and recreation, the bitter fact remains that nearly 20,000 Jews who are incarcerated there are literally in prison, surrounded by soldiers with machine guns, and living behind barbed wire enclosures, just as they did in concentration camps,” Mrs Pool said. “The reception camp on Cyprus is a disgrace to civilization. Overcrowding, squalor, lack of sanitation and even the simplest amenities are filling the new-comers with despair.”
The sum of $1,305,720 has been raised by Hadassah since last October for the maintenance and education of some 8000 children now undergoing Youth Aliyah training in Palestine, Mrs. Siegfried Kramarsky, national Youth Aliyah chairman of Hadassah, reported. The nearly 14,500 gradustes of the Youth Aliyah system of combined work and study in cooperative colonies and special schools “have made a highly successful adjustment to Palestinian life and become productive citizens of their communities,” she stated.
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.
