INHUMAN TRAFFIC IN JEWISH CHILDREN

Northern Advocate, 6 September 1947, Page 7

INHUMAN TRAFFIC IN JEWISH CHILDREN

The Northern Advocate, Saturday September 6, 1947.

(Received 1 p.m.) LONDON, September 5. “STRIKINGLY inhuman organisations” are conducting an illegal traffic in Jewish children between Europe and Palestine, said a British Foreign Office spokesman today. The main organisation, known as Hashomer Hatzair (the Young Watchman Party), which is a Left-Wing Socialist group within the Zionist Organisation, deports children from Hungary to Germany where they have waited sometimes a year before being put aboard a ship bound for Palestine.

It is possible that 200 children taken from their parents in Hungary will be found among Jewish refugees aboard the three British ships which are now nearing Hamburg. The traffic was discovered when 13 parents appealed to the British political representative at Budapest to secure the repatriation of 13 children whom they believed Jewish organisations had shipped to Palestine aboard the illegal immigrant ship President Warfield.

Children often were taken from their parents without their knowledge or consent.

It is understood the British Government will draw the Hungarian authorities’ attention to the matter.

Hashomer Hatzair has an address in Budapest and the parents’ evidence showed a systematic breaking up of families had been carried out for two years. The children, who are believed to be aboard the refugee ships going to Hamburg, left Hungary in two groups of 100 each many months ago.

In Jerusalem today a spokesman for Hashomer Hatzair denied the Foreign Office allegations. France has offered to fit the Jews now en route to Hamburg into a . transit emigrants’ quota, provided that Britain agrees to make a number of Palestine visas available to them each month, so they can legally continue their journey to their chosen destination.

France yesterday refused to renew her appeal to the Jews to accept French sanctuary, but the new offer reopens the case.