Page Six
THE JEWISH NEWS
The Marvelous Voyage
of the S. S. Mataroa
Friday, October
, 1945 27
This latter group of 36 youths between the
ages of 7 and 16 hailed from England. Accom-
panied by their tutor, they were going to Pal-
estine where many of their parents had preceded
them.
Among the young passengers two were out-
standing because of exceptional experience and
intrepidity. - One, a boy from Warsaw, had sur-
vived the Battle of the Ghetto. Sharing honors
with him was a 16-year-old' girl from Cracow,
who, in the course of ten months, had passed
through six concentration camps, escaped to the
American Zone of Occupation, reached Brussels
and eventually Paris.
Aboard the S.S. MATAROA were 240 agricul-
tural workers, who had received their training
in France, and another 100 who had learned farm-
ing in England—all eager to be absorbed by vari-
ous agricultural settlements in Palestine.
Adventure, the will to survive and the in-
trepidity born of the trials and tribulations of the
Dreadful Decade just ended in Europe, were the
hallmarks of most of the other passengers aboard
the S.S. MATAROA. Many hundreds of them,
who had been overtaken by the Nazi Juggernaut
in the .early days of the war, went into hiding in
ing her passengers across the old sea lanes of the France, Belgium and the Netherlands, and man-
They Sailed to a New Life
Mediterranean to the land of their dreams and aged to live "somehow" on the bounty of non-
their hearts' desire—to Palestine.
In The Jewish National Home
Jewish friends, or on the aid secretly supplied
by
JDC. Again, many of the former internees
A few details about the passengers aboard the
of concentration camps had to go AWOL in order
S.S. 1VIATAROA concern us all.
to reach Naples on the S.S. MATAROA. But the
HE S.S. MATAROA is a
The 1,164 passengers who boarded her at 10th of July saw them all—fully 1,164 of them—
rather commonplace boat. Neither liner nor Naples constituted the largest transport of ref- in Naples, and five days later the headlands of
floating palace, she is "in trade" and is designed ugees to sail for Palestine since the outbreak of Mount Carmel rose upon the horizon to nod a
to carry passengers and cargo. She is not large World War II. Of these, 500 were survivors of silent welcome upon their arrival at the shores
—a mere 18,000 tons, certainly nothing to boast some of the most notorious concentration camps of Palestine.
in Germany. Many were still clad in the striped
of in these days of 50,000-ton "Queens."
All day on Sunday, July 15, Jews of Haifa
uniforms of their prisons. Several carried even
and
Hadar Ha-Carmel watched the engrossing
But this year on July 10 something happened more pathetic mementos—their serial numbers spectacle. Down the gang-plank of the S.S. MAT-
tattooed
on
their
arms
or
foreheads.
to the S.S. MATAROA, something which convert-
AROA, now riding at anchor, streamed a long line
ed that commonplace fruit-an-meat carrier into a
Then, there were 242 orphans, recently rescued of men and women ready to begin their new lives.
dream ship. On that -day the S.S. MATAROA from Buchenwald, Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. It was a red-letter day in the history of the larg-
took on passengers from almost all the lands Freedom and kindness had not been theirs long est port of Palestine.
of stricken Europe and even from the "seven com- enough to erase the furtive look of the hunted
And did the JDC help, you ask? Yes, it did!
partments of Gehenna." Weighing anchor in the from their eyes. But now the sunshine and gentle
magnificent harbor of Naples, the S.S. MATAROA breezes of the Mediterranean began to show their The JDC spent $80,000 for passage on the S.S.
started a five-day sail south and eastward, carry- salutary influence. Their pallor waned, and the MATAROA. It had made it possible for many
of the refugees to sail for Palestine by maintain-
companionship of a happier group of youngsters ing them in hiding, paying their fare across the
slowly removed the distrust and icy reserve that continent to Naples and training the young
congealed their young souls.
pioneers in Hachsharah projects.
,
Palestine's
Absorptive
Capacity
BY DR. WALTER CLAY LOWDERMILK
(Peprinted from Dr. Lowdermilk's "Palestine, Land
of Promise," Harper & Bros., New York)
I
N ESTIMATING PALESTINE'S
capacity to absorb immigrants we must consider
the contribution of wealth among them and the
social structure they build. Colonies who rely
on the exploitation of natives require large areas
of land and cannot develop an intensive type of
agriculture capable of forming the base for a
dense population. Cheap native labor serves as
an obstacle in the way of immigrants seeking
work. Jewish settlement in Palestine is one of
the very few instances in which European coloni-
zation has raised the standards of the native
population. The Arabs of Palestine are not only
more advanced and prosperous than those of the
neighboring countries of Iraq and Syria, but
have actually doubled their number during pre-
cisely the period which has brought hundreds
of thousands of Jewish immigrants to Palestine.
Moreover, by broad application of the principles
of cooperation and conservation, the Jews of Pal-
estine have created a social structure that sup-
plies their own food with growing efficiency and
produces industrial goods on an ever increasing
scale.
If the forces of reclamation and progress Jew-
ish settlers have introduced are permitted to con-
tinue, Palestine may well be the leaven that will
transform the other lands of the Near East. Once
the great undeveloped resources of these coun-
tries are properly exploited, twenty to thirty mil-
lion people may live decent and prosperous lives
where a few million now struggle for a bare
existence. Palestine can serve as the example,-
the demonstration, the lever, that will lift the
entire Near East from its present desolate condi-
tion to a dignified place in a free world.
J C Helps Children First
L
IKE parents hop-
ing that their children will enjoy
fuller, richer lives than they them-
selves have known, the eyes of
world Jewry are fixed on the Jew-
ish children of Europe. In them,
whose formative years have been
spent in the terror of Nazi torture,
lies the destiny of the Jewish peo-
ple of Europe.
In Europe today there are about
150,000 Jewish children—children
who have never known a carefree,
happy day, children who have seen
their parents tortured and mur-
dered, children whose scrawny
limbs, bloated bellies and deep-
ringed eyes speak of long years of
hunger and hiding from the sun:
So important does the Joint
Distribution Committee, acting for
all American Jews, consider the
problems of these children that
nearly half its 1945 appropriations
are being used to give direct aid to
these children. Certain problems
are universal. Children must be
helped to rejoin their parents or
find homes. Those still in non-
Jewish homes or institutions must
be restored to a Jewish environ-
ment.
One of the first tasks of the
JDC representatives when they
were admitted to the former con-
centration camps was the removal
of Jewish children, and today all
without parents in camps have.
been taken out to havens in Swe-
den, Switzerland, England, France
and Palestine. Although the JDC.
had arranged havens for 5,000, only
about 2,500 children were found
in all the camps. These were main-
ly youths between 14 and 20, since
the younger children, too weak to
work, were exterminated.
Many of these ex-internees and
many "lost" Jewish children have
relatives, and reunions are being
effected daily through the tracing
centers now operating all over Eu-
rope. But many hundreds more
will never find their parents. The
toll of orphans left in the wake of
the Nazi cataclysm is great, and
the Jewish community must plan
for those who have no one to care
for them. In Europe, in Palestine
or elsewhere, homes must be pro-
vided for the homeless and the
parentless.
The majority will probably find
their greatest happiness in Pales-
tine. There they can forget their
early torture and develop into
strong, healthy adults, building
their share of the better world of
tomorrow.
Within the past two months, the
S.S. MATAROA carried 1,164 per-
sons, many from former concentra-
tion camps, to Palestine. Included
among the passengers were 242 or-
phans, who have already begun
their lives of freedom in the sun-
shine of Palestine. The first trans-
port of Jews from .a liberated con-
centration camp to Palestine was
arranged by J•D.C. in cooperation
with SHAEF and the Jewish agen-
cy. A British vessel recently
brought 200 Greek Jewish orphans
to Palestine. Other transports
have been arranged.
More than 24,000 orphans or
children waiting to be reunited
wiliktheir parents are being main-
tained, wholly or partly, by J.D.C..
in France, Belgium, Switzerland
and Holland. In Romania, Hun-
gary, Greece, Turkey and Italy,
thousands more are helped by the
J. D. C. program.
Polish-born youngsters by the
hundred are arriving in northern
Italy from concentration camps in
southern Germany and Austria
and are being cared for by J. D. C.
Every known Jewish -child in Italy
today is under Jewish care and pro-
vided for in the program admin-
istered by the local communities
but subsidized by J.D-C. Many
who hid their identity in convents
in southern Italy have been taken
to a J.D.C. orphanage in Rome.
About a third of the 11,000 chil-
dren in France, the majority of
them youngsters whose parents
have been deported, are now living
in child-care institutions of the
OZE, SERE and other agencies
which are supported. by the J.D.C
Because of a severe lack of build-
ings and equipment for institution-
al care, 2,000 still live in
Christian homes, but as fast as
Jewish homes become avail-
able, they are removed.
A sensitive problem is that
of Jewish children protected
in Christian homes and insti-
tutions during the Nazi oc-
cupation. Christian parents
who risked their own lives to
protect the little ones en-
trusted to them by parents
marked for deportation in many
instances have formed strong at-
tachments for these children. But,
once convinced that the children
will have good living arrangements
and a favorable future, they are
giving up their charges. The num-
ber of Jewish children in non-Jew-
ish homes grows less daily. Chil-
dren living with private Christian
families receive the regular super-
vision of Jewish family care or-
ganizations.
Of the 10,000 children hidden
during the occupation, more than
2,000 have already been reunited
with their parents.
.
Only five months of peace, yet
already the condition of Jewish
children in Europe is immeasur-
ably bettered. May the new year
5706 see the glow of health and
happiness return to all their faces.