VICTIMS OF PERSECUTION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 18, 17 December 1938, Page 15

VICTIMS OF PERSECUTION.

PLIGHT DISCUSSED. With a view to urging the Government to lift the. restrictions on immigration, which are preventing New Zealand from offering an asylum to refugee victims of Nazi persecutions, a public meeting is to lie called in Palmerston North towards the end of January. This decision was reached at a meeting held in the Y.W.C.A. rooms yesterday afternoon, when the plight of the refugees was discussed. Cr. G. Tremaine (deputy-Mayor) was in the chair, and others present were Miss M. Saunders (general secretary of the Y.W.C.Ai), Revs. J. Hubbard, A. Blackmorc, and M. A. McDowell, Mr S. J. Bennett (representing the League of Nations Union), Mr A. Grigor (president of the Rotary Club), Mr T. R. Hodder, Mr G- H. 0. Wilson, Dr. It. Reifer, and Dr. J. Melville. The feeling of the meeting was that tile present position regarding refugees entering the Dominion could not be justified on humanitarian grounds. Dr. Dr. Melville, who, before coming to Palmerston North, was secretary to an Austrian refugee committee in Christchurch, explained what was being done in the south. The Christchurch committee thought that its previous efforts to assist refugees .were inadequate now tljat the problem had assumed such gigantifc proportions, and that Government legislation was desirable. To this end meetings to enlist public support in favour of accepting refugees into New Zealand were being organised in many parts of the country.