Vatican Planning to Aid Baptized Jews Settle in Palestine

The settlement of a colony of baptized Jews who have sought Palestine as their refuge from Hitler persecutions is reported in the “Bavarian Volkszeitung”, a Catholic newspaper published in Munich. Its Rome correspondent reports this noteworthy bit of news, giving ecclesiastical circles in Rome as his source. According to a report from Jerusalem circulating in Rome, a colony of 180 Christian Jews has gathered in St. John Montana, the home of St. John the Baptist, to escape the Hitler ukase which brands them as Jews unto the fourth generation. The Jews themselves are undecided whether the apostasy of these new arrivals does not automatically exclude them from the race. To avoid debate and conflict, these Jews who have become Christians will settle somewhere far from Tel-Aviv, the all-Jewish city of Palestine. Half of these “Jews” are Catholics, the other half Protestant. The Catholics have founded a missionary sect for the purpose of spreading the Faith.

The Berlin “Juedische Rundschau” comments that it has been unable to confirm this report which, if true, is a “curiosity of our times” Perhaps, it conjectures, these baptized Jews are counting on assistance from the Church, which has an interest in strengthening its position in Palestine. Nor it clear under which of the paragraphs limiting immigration to Palestine these refugees were admitted.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on May 8 that an agricultural colony of Jewish Christians was being planned and that for this purpose Sir Leon Levison had contracted for the purchase of land near Gaza on behalf of the Hebrew Christian alliance.