The Modem EtocHms

Waikato Times, Volume 114, Issue 19052, 16 September 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

The Modem EtocHms

(Manchester Guardian,)

THE JEWS are again on the marc’h. A steady sbream comes out or Germany and turns to France, Belgium, Holland,'Czecho-Slovakia, and, in a smaller degree, England. It is calculated that more than 50,000 refugees have already fled from Germany, and the great majority of them are Jews. Many have had to flee because they were Socialists or Internationalists or pacifists, as well «s being Jews, and were marked with a double offence, political and racial. The greatest number have gone to Paris, where It is believed that some 30,000 have a temporary home. A few thousands are found In Brussels, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Basle, and Zurich. In England the number probably does not exceed 1000. Some 1500 have Made Their Way to Palestine, armed with legal immigration certificates. A smaller number have come to the National Home as tourists and are not inclined to return. Except in Palestine, few of the refugees can do regular work. Everywhere they arrive to find a crisis of unemployment. The communities, both the nonJewish and the Jewish, in the countries to which they have turned have come forward most generously to maintain them. They provide food and lodging for those without means. In rnayy cases families have offered indefinite hospitality, either to families or individuals. In England, particularly, most of those who have looked to the traditional asylum for political refugees have found that personal and friendly welcome. The position cannot slay indefinitely as it Is It is Impossible for the philanthropic bodies in the countries of refuge to go on maintaining thousands of idle persons. It is a hard fate that the time of grossest oppression coincides with the time of greatest restriction of immigration.' The world seems to be divided, for the Jews, into countries in which they cannot live and countries to which they cannot immigrate. Nevertheless, the Jews,* bringing their contribution of value, their Energy, Intelligence, and Man-Power, should be welcome In certain countries, and the effort of the Jewish communal bodies throughout the world is being directed towards plans of scientific absorption. The prosperity of Palestine during the last ten years has shown the economic benefits that Jewish immigration may bring to an economically not very hopeful country. That example may influence other lands. It is clear that any system of scientific immigration of the Jewish refugees from Germany enquiries that the immigrants should be fitted for productive life- There is no room for a great addition to the number of lawyers, doctors, teachers, administrators, merchants, and small leaders. The transfer of population must bo accompanied by a transformation of the individuals. Otherwise the weary round would continue, which lias gone on almost uninterruptedly from the Middle .Wes, of a Jewish exodus from one eoimlry lo another, producing in lime a professional and trading proletariat in that country, and arousing anli-.lowish feeling, til! the Jews are driven to a fresh exodus. If the religious motive of Jewish persecution has changed through the ccn-

Jewish Migrants from Germany.

turies, the economic motive has always been the same. The Jew, then, must be transformed from the intellectual to the manual worker. That has been done on a large scale in Russia, with the spur of necessity, and on a smaller scale In Palestine, with the stimulus of idealism. It can be done for the younger element of those who have fled from Germany under the combined stimulus. Already one may note the Creation of Frosh Problems,, which, unless they are checked, may lead on to fresh hostility. At the University of Basle, a town very close to the German frontier, nearly half the students now are Jew-s, most of them not Swiss Jews, but from Germany and the Baltic lands. They art? studying principally medicine and law. Yet a large proportion of them can hardly hope to And an outlet for their talents when they have completed their training. On the oilier hand their presence provokes that anti-Jewish feeling which can pass so easily from country to country. The intellectuals of the world have responded splendidly to the call of assisting the intellectual victims of German persecution. The Committee of Academic Assistance in England, and similar bodies in other countries, are devising ways and means of placing as many as possible of the brilliant intellects which Germany has rejected. But the process must have its limits; and the young generation which is forced to leave Germany must make its own way in the world, and can only hope lo do so if it lias the more normal distribution between the manual and Hie intellectual vocations. The problem of the new exodus of the 50,000 refugees who have already come out of Germany and the part of the youns generation in Germany which, it seems likely, will be compelled more and more to seek a land of greater freedom and justice, like all economic and social problems to-day, requires for its solution International Action and Co-operation. In that more tranquil and care-free world before the Great War it was possible for a single country to absorb in a year more than a million immigrants. To-day no country, great or small, can absorb annually 10,000 Immigrants without careful and scientific planning. On the other hand xve have seen in “the last decade how international action has contrived to find a home for two million Greek refugees from Anatolia in European Greece, for 160.000 transferred Bulgarians from Macedonia in their homeland, for over 50,000 Armenians in Syria and Soviet Russia. 'Pile problem of the Jewish exodus is at. once smaller and greater. It is smaller because the numbers involved are more restricted. It Is greater because it is not a question of transferring people simply from country to country, to carry on their obi living, but of lining them at Hie same time to carry on a new life. If it is more difficult, it will, on the other hand, command the best brains of the Jewish people; and interna I tonal co-operation combined with Jewish effort should be adequate lo solve It. The Jewish National Home will accommodate a substantial part and will, moreover, give an example and an inspiration to the rest of the Jewish population of Hie reconstruction and normalisation of Jewish life.