World Zionist Organization chairman Yosef Almogi accused the Soviet authorities of deliberately acting to inflate the "drop out" rate of Soviet Jewish emigrants who leave the Soviet Union but do not settle in Israel. Almogi alleged that the Kremlin purposely grants a high proportion of visas to academics and professional people–many of them from Odessa–while cutting back on visas to less highly trained Jews from Georgia, who are more likely to go to Israel because they are more easily absorbed there.
This was Almogi’s explanation for the current 60 percent "dropout rate" of Soviet Jews reaching Vienna in a talk with the United Jewish Appeal Spring Cash Mission which ended its visit here last week. The mission was headed by UJA national cash chairman Gerald Colburn of Milwaukee. Almogi warned that the rising drop out rate may endanger the chances of other Soviet Jews obtaining exit visas.
Almogi acknowledged Israel’s difficulties in absorbing Soviet academics. He compared the situation to that in 1933 when Palestine Jewry was flooded by a wave of German academics and professionals fleeing from Hitler. "In those days," Almogi said, "he other country would let them in. Today other doors are open." Many of the 1933 German refugees became kibbutzniks, bricklayers, road-builders or took any other sort of employment that they could find.
Almogi said the existing system of aliya shlichim was ineffective." What can 30 shlichim do among six million American Jews?" he asked. He advocated instead, the establishment of Israel Desks in every Zionist organization in the world for the encouragement of aliya, volunteers and tourism. Such a plan is on the drawing board, Almogi stated. He conceded that implementation would be complicated but vowed it would be achieved.
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.
