Mass Flight of Jews from Algeria Assumes Unprecedented Proportions

Three planes carrying the entire Jewish population of the Algerian town of Gordaya-about 300 men, women and children-arrived in Marseilles today as part of the growing influx of Jewish refugees from Algeria. Some of the 300 speak only Arabic and arrived in native dress.

At the same time some 4,500 Jews of the Algerian city of Tlemcen left for France today according to a report by General Lennuyeux, French army commander of the area. Jewish circles here estimate that about 15 percent of the thousands of refugees who left Algeria during the last few days were Jews. Sixty-five planes carrying several thousand refugees left Oran with another 2,000 embarking for Marseilles by ship.

An official of the central Jewish welfare agency in France reported today that an estimated 40,000 to 45,000 Jews have been among the Algerians pouring into France in the last few weeks. Julien Samuel, executive director of the Fonds Social Juif Unifie, made the report at the close of a two day meeting of the Standing Conference on European Jewish Community Services.

(The New York Times reported today from Algiers that some 60,000 of the 280,000 persons leaving Algeria during April, May and June, were Jews, constituting about half of the Jewish population of 125,000 at the end of 1960.)

Dr. Astorre Mayer, of Milan, president of the Standing Conference, reported that Jewish communities of seven European countries had contributed $150,000 to a joint fund sponsored by the Conference to help Algerian and other North African Jewish refugees. Conference delegates also were told that the Swiss Jewish Federation and the Copenhagen Jewish Community had offered to take care of Algerian Jewish children in summer camps and private homes.

J. D. C. SENDS REPRESENTATIVE TO ALGERIA; NEEDS OF REFUGEES OUTLINED

Charles H. Jordan, director-general of the Joint Distribution Committee, reported on JDC efforts for the refugees, pouring into France. He also reported that a JDC representative had been sent to Algeria to help the remaining Jews there carry on essential communal services which have been badly disrupted. He said the representative’s first act was to evacuate 175 children whose families wanted them moved to conditions of safety and to provide on-the-spot care for Jews left without means.

M. Samuel told the Conference meeting that while the Algerian Jewish newcomers would benefit from new French legislation for repatriates, some groups of the Jewish refugees had special and urgent needs which the French Jewish community would have to meet. He discussed the severe material difficulties which the FSJU was facing, including the need to provide temporary lodging for the refugees, care for the children and the aged and special treatment for many social cases.

Other special needs, he reported, were provision of collective housing for aged refugees who had no relatives and for children whose families currently are unable to care for them. He disclosed that, in response to emergency calls, contributions to the welfare agency had increased substantially this year as compared with last year but the funds were far from adequate to cope with the growing dimensions of the refugee influx.

M. Samuel also pointed out that the social problems created by resettlement were particularly acute among the Algerian Jewish refugees “because they have always led a traditional and religious life.” For that reason, he said, French Jewry considered the main problems of aid to be in the religious and cultural areas. He said it was considered imperative to provide such facilities as synagogues, religious classes and schools to avert disorganization among the refugees and to speed their integration into French Jewish life.

The French Chief Rabbinate announced that it would launch a special religious fund to enable it to provide for the religious needs of the refugees. The fund plan was announced last night at a conference of French and Algerian consistories and representatives of traditional Jewish organizations. Funds will be used to open new synagogues, afternoon Hebrew schools, courses of Jewish religious instruction and religious institutions in areas of refugee settlement where such facilities and institutions do not exist.