friday, March 16, 1945

THE JEWISH NEWS

22 National Jewish Groups
Assist JDC Clothing Drive

Weekly Review of the News of the World

(Compiled From Cables of Independent Jewish Press Service)

Joint Distribution Committee Enlists Organizations in
United National Campaign to Secure 150 Million
Pounds of Garments for Europe's Needy

NEW YORK--Organizations whose membership includes 70
percent of the total population of the nation will cooperate in the
United National Clothing Collection for war relief during April,
it was announced by Henry J. Kaiser, national chairman of the
drive.

The Joint Distribution Committee, major American Jewish
agency for relief overseas, has enlisted the support of 22 national
Jewish membership organizations in the undertaking. Under JDC
auspices, these groups will stimulate their chapters to full partici-
pation in the forthcoming drive. JDC will also act as claimant for
clothing in behalf of Jews abroad whose needs are not met by
UNRRA.

A total of 117 organizations, with 698,132 local units throughout
the nation and an enrollment of 93,975,322 members will support
the effort to procure 150,000,000 pounds of serviceable used clothing,
shoes and bedding for the destitute millions in the war-devastated
lands abroad.

The cooperating religious groups to date represent 157,766 of
America's 179,742 churches and synagogues and 31,250,783 of the
55,807,366 church members. They constitute the largest single ele-
ment of American life in the cooperating list.
The women's organizations stand second, representing- 15,844,-
949 members. They are followed, in the point of numerical
strength, by fraternal organizations with 15,235,607 members.
Organized labor, with 13,646,000 members, is fourth in the number
of individual men and women involved.

The campaign will open April 1. The United National Cloth-
ing. Collection is the united effort of all the voluntary war relief
agencies and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Adminis-
tration, and will be the only drive for clothing for overseas war re-
lief in the spring of 1945.

Himmler Maps Conditions
For Release of More Jews

Head of International Red Cross, New Swiss Minister to

Paris, Reported Going to Berlin to Discuss
Terms; WJC Disclose Negotiations

GENEVA (JPS-Palcor)—Heinrich Himmler has declared him-
self ready to release, on certain conditions, large numbers of Jews
in German ghettos and slave labor camps, and to extend better
treatment to French war prisoners and release some • of them.
The conditions were submitted by Monsieur Musy, former
member of the Swiss Federal Council, who negotiated the release
of 1,200 Jews from Theresienstadt, to Prof. Carl Burckhardt, Presi-
dent of the International Red Cross, recently appointed Swiss Min-
ister to Paris.

Musy is reported to have conveyed Himrnler's wish to discuss
the conditions with Prof. Burckhardt personally. It is believed
that Prof. Burckhardt will defer taking over his duties as Minister
to Paris and within a few days proceed to Berlin to negotiate with
the Gestapo Chief.

That important negotiations for the rescue of German Jews
were under way was revealed also in a statement issued by the
Geneva Office of the World Jewish Congress.

Page Three

PALESTINE

The proposed taxation program of the
Palestine Government "is not alone an eco-
nomic problem, but also a political problem,
liable to liquidate Jewish footholds," was the
warning issued by the Association of Import-
ers and Wholesalers held in Tel Aviv. A re-
. port submitted to the meeting revealed that
Jewish Palestine contributed about $240,000,-
000 to the Palestine Governments budget in
. the past decade, and received in return ser-
vices only about $4,000,000 for the same period.
Sir Edward Grigg, British Minister to the
Middle East, paid a surprise visit to the new
Jewish settlement Eshel situatefl in the Negev,
where cultivation has only recently been
launched. Sir Edward inspected the settlement,
near Beer Sheba, and asked many questions
concerning wheat cultivation and other crops.
Stating that it appeared to him that they still
had "difficult work ahead," he said: "Dr.
Chaim Weizmann told me that this was a fine
and interesting place and I have decided to
pay you a visit, and I wasn't disappointed."
Sir‘ Edward was frankly surprised at Jew-
ish farming methods and asked the settlers of
Givath Brenner how so large a number of
people could subsist on the small area which
is theirs, during a recent visit to the Jewish
settlement. He was to have spent one hour at
the settlement, but left only after having spent
two full hours, interviewing the members and
making a thorough inspection.
The first class as the nucleus for a Haifa
school was opened early in January at Ramat
Hashophet, hillside village near Air Hashophet.
The communal settlement choge its name in
honor of the late Judge Julian W. Mack. It is
part of "Hashomer Hatzair" Kibbutz Artzi
movement.
The first granddaughter, hailed as "the
harbinger of a third generation of pioneers on
this spot," was born recently at the communal
settlement Mizraa of Hashomer Hatzair. The
parents are a young couple, of whom the wife
is the daughter of M. and D. Bader, founders
of the settlement, and herself born there, and
the husband is a graduate of the youth group,
now a Palestinian soldier.

AMERICA

The permanent banning of all Axis or Axis
satellite nations, exclusion of Axis war crim-
inals from the Western Hemisphere and the
restoration of -Axis loot cached in Latin, Ain-
erican countries, was agreed upon by the In-
ter-American Conference on Problems of
War and Peace in Mexico City to prevent the
"infiltration of subversive ideologies and the
dissemination of totalitarian doctrines" in the
Americas has been presented to the confer-
ence.
A "bi-national political agreement" in
Palestine, "with non-minority status and au-
tonomy for each national cultural group, and
freedom -of Jewish immigration," is advocated
by Bernice Kaufman in the Contemporary
Jewish Record' .It is, essentially, the plan as
advocated by Dr. J. L. Magnes, president of
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where
Miss Kaufman studied.
The first performance of Ernst Levy's
Ninth Symphony for orchestra and chorus,
based on the prayer "Shwa Yisroel" and "con-
ceived as an outcry of distress, a testimony of

.11 ■ 1111 ■ 111•11.

faith and an appeal to the world" by German
Jews of 1938 when the symphony was written,
was given in New York at Carnegie Hall by
the National Orchestra Association conducted
by Leo Barzin, at a Gabrilowitsch Memorial
Concert.
N. Y. State Supreme Court Justice Murphy
in a recent opinion upheld the right of a news-
paper to reject advertisements of a discrim-
inatory nature. Defendent in the case was the
New York Times which had refused to ac-
cept an advertisement from The Camp of the
Pines, an upstate resort, which contained the
words: "selected clientelle." The term, Justice
Murphy asserted, was a euphemism to conceal
discrimination against Jews and Negroes.

OVERSEAS

A grim procession weaved through the
streets of the Budapest ghetto, passed its ruins,
the other day, as thousands of Jews followed
hearses carrying the remains of 6,141 Jews
who had perished by violent death and from
hunger in the last weeks of the city's siege.
Four thousand orphans whose parents
perished under German occupation have been
placed in Biro Bidjan and are being maintained
at the expense of the Jewish Autonomous- Re-
gion. The project was proposed by the resi-
dents of the Region. Kalman Bigler, deputy to
the Supreme Soviet, took a leading part in or-
ganizating this matter.
The Arab states represented at the con-
ference of Arab Foreign Ministers in Cairo will
establish information offices at Washington and
London "to defend the Arab point of view,"
Azzam Bey, Egyptian Minister of Arab af-
fairs, announced in Cairo.
The Rome Jewish Community Council has
opened an exhibition of charts, photographs
and other documentary material relating to
Jewish life under the Germans. The photo-
graphs include some secretly taken at the
Piacenza concentration camp, depicting, the de-
portation of Jews to Poland's death camp, and
others actually taken at the scene of battles
between Italian guerillas and German and
Italian military, showing Jewish guerillas in
action. Soldiers serving with the Allied armies
frequent the exhibition.
When Germany invaded Russia, Kalman
Bigler, who represents the Jewish autonomous
Region, Biro Bidjan, in the Supreme Soviet,
was entrusted with the task of evacuating in-
dustrial enterprises to the East, and recently
he has been entrusted a task doubly pleasant
—that of restoring cities evacuated before the
Nazi occupation, or destroyed by the Nazis.
The Soviet Government has allocated large
sums for this work.
Neither Prime Minister Churchill nor Pre-
sident Roosevelt have made any attempt to
hasten the solution of the Palestine problem,
Lord Strabolgi, head of the Dominion of the
Palestine League, charged at a meeting in
London. Lord Strabolgi said an "impenetrable
veil" of political censorship "with no relation
to military security" has been thrown around
events in Palestine.
American Jewish soldiers stationed in
England have `adopted" a Jewish orphanage
"somewhere in the vicinity near where they
are stationed." They visit the orphans per-
iodically, providing treats, special parties and
arranging " outings for them.

JDC Now A Major Factor
In Middle East, Official Says

Rebuilding of Jewish Institutions Destroyed in • Europe
and Transferred . to Palestine Is One of Many
Projects of Joint Distribution Committee

NEW YORK (WNS)—"The Joint Distribution Committee,
through its support of a Jewish institutions and special projects in
Turkey and Palestine, has become a major factor in Jewish life in
the Middle East," Mordecai Kessler, JDC overseas representative,
who has just returned after a 20-month visit to the Middle East
and North Africa, said here.

"Much of our work in Palestine," Kessler stated, "is directed
toward the rebuilding and maintenance of the Jewish institutions
that have been destroyed in Eastern Europe and which have been
transferred to Palestine. In this connection, the JDC has made a
yearly grant to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and, during
1944, appropriated $325,000 for refugee rabbis and yeshivoth—ad-
vanced religious schools."

Kessler told of the special nutrition program arranged by the
JDC for students and rabbis and which was necessitated by their
poor health conditions. Another JDC project was the "make-
work" program which included 47 refugee rabbis.

AND SUNDAY 1

Rheumatoid Arthritis Signs
Discovered by Detroiters

Drs. Hugo A. Freund, Gabriel Steiner and Bruno Leichten-
tritt Learn of Little Knots Distributed in Muscle
and Nerve Tissue

WASHINGTON, D. C. (JPS)—The discovery of little knots or
nodules widely distributed in the muscle and nerve tissues of
patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, "offers an explanation
of the pain, tenderness, nutritional changes and muscular wasting
generally seen in arthritis patients," according to a report signed
by Drs. Hugo A. Freund of Harper Hospital, Gabriel Steiner of
Wayne University College of Medicine, Bruno Leichtentritt of
Eloise Hospital, all of Detroit, and Major Alvin E. Price of the
U. S. Army Medical Corps, Science News Letter reports.
Study of the signs of nerve involvement, frequently noted in
rheumatoid arthritis and heretofore unexplained, led to the dis-
covery by the Detroit scientists of the inflamatory nodules in the
muscles and nerves of arthritis patients. Patients who did not
have arthritis showed no signs of such nodules.

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