Top United Jewish Appeal leaders today called on American Jewry to support the UJA’s 1953 campaign to make possible the immigration of Jewish refugees from the Communist countries to Israel, in the event the Communist leaders heed Israel’s appeal to let the Jews emigrate. The appeal, in the form of an advertisement which appeared this morning in the nation’s leading newspapers, was signed by UJA general chairman Edward M.M, Warburg and seven national chairmen.
Addressing a luncheon yesterday opening the 1953 drive of the Women’s Division of the UJA of Greater New York, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt declared that it had shocked many people to suddenly “find behind the Iron Curtain the same kind of anti-Semitism in action which the Soviets condemned so harshly in the Nazi state.” She added that “we have again the spectacle of people fleeing from oppression.”
The difference for the Jewish refugees today, she stressed, is that the State of Israel exists, and “these people know that there is a place to which they can go.” She emphasized that “without the help of all of us” Israel cannot be made the kind of permanent home the refugees need.
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.
