Foreign Office To Probe Alleged Jew Exodus From Europe

Northern Advocate, 4 January 1946, Page 4

Foreign Office To Probe Alleged Jew Exodus From Europe

(Rec. 1 p.m.) LONDON. Jan. 3 The British Foreign Office has decided to investigate Lieut.-General Morgan's allegation of a planned Jewish exodus from Europe, says the "Evening News.” A request for an inquiry into the accuracy or otherwise of the allegation was made by Unrra. The Foreign Office is expected to inquire through Britain’s diplomatci representatives in Poland and other eastern European countries and the matter may eventually come before the Anglo-American Committee studying Jewish questions in relation to Poland. “GROTESQUE, UNCHARITABLE” The Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement declaring that it was astonished that General Morgan should be so ill-informed, despite repeated official Polish and Czech statements admitting anti-Semitic attacks. The few surviving Polish Jews understandably are fleeing from places of horror in the hope of starting afresh in a Jewish National Home.

“General Morgan's references to a Jewish plot not only are grotesque but are highly uncharitable and unworthy when it comes from the head of an organisation whose purpose is to bring comfort to the suffering victims of Nazi barbarity.” FEAR THE IMPULSE

A suggestion that a world-wide Jewish conspiratorial organisation was arranging for the infiltration of Polish Jews into the American zone was described by Judge Rifkind as “Just so much poppycock." Judge Rifkind is adviser on Jewish affairs to Lieut.General McNarney. Giving his personal views on General Morgan’s belief that the. flow of Polish Jews westward was part of a well-organised and positive plan Judge Rifkind said 95 per cent of those he had interviewed were leaving Poland under a sense of compulsion either genuine or imagined. The predominant factor in the flight was fear. GRIM PUNCTUATION Those who had returned to their homes in Poland found an attitude of mtense hostility on the part of the native population. He had seen notices posted on Jewish doors ordering the occupants to leave Poland on pain of death. There was no evidence that there had been pogroms in the sense of mass slaughters, but receipt of notices to leave, punctuated by the death of some individual Jew, was sufficient to bring home the point. The Polish Government was opposed to the persecution and was attempting to eliminate it, but so far it had been powerless in face of the anti-semitism of the population. PALESTINE THE GOAL

Migrants from Poland were guided and assisted, not by a secret organisation but by the remnants of an old Jewish organisation which had existed in Poland for many years. They were assisted by volunteers to whom the rescue of (lie few remaining Jews in Europe hacl become the only passion making life worth living. Only 75,000 of 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the war were surviving. It was among these that a skeleton service for the guidance of migrants had arisen. Guidance consisted mainly in rudimentary road instructions.

The migrants undoubtedly hoped eventually to reach Palestine.