JF Ptak Science Books Post 2627
This quote is from (Rabi) Israel Goldstein as head of the Zionist Organization of America appeal and addresses the British White Paper of 1939 on Palestine and allowing Jews to immigrate to escape "the hands of the Nazi executioner" in Europe, which amongst many other things limited Jewish immigration to 75,000 for 5 years (1939-1944) with limits of further immigration to be determined by the Arab majority. "Were our pleas for the opening of the doors of Palestine headed in the past few years, at least 300,000 lives would have been saved. Unfortunately, even the immigration of Jews within the limited quota of the White Paper was not facilitated as it might have been" wrote Goldstein in this address.
There is a long and complicated history to the White Paper but suffice to say that while millions of Jews were being slaughtered in Europe the restrictive White Paper remained in place, which meant that the haven for escape to Palestine was largely closed relative to the numbers of people needing to be saved, and that at the end of the war there were still 3000+ visas that hadn't yet been granted. Goldstein makes the case for the extreme peripheral usefulness of the Paper in 1939, but in 1944 when the Axis influence in the Middle East was extremely minor adhering to the white Paper was a tragedy: "if the White Paper was unwise and unworthy then, it is more shameful and baseless now" he wrote.1 ("The Provisional Council of Israel's first constitutional act [in 1948] was a Proclamation that "All legislation resulting from the British Government's White Paper of May, 1939, will at midnight tonight become null and void."--Wiki on the White Paper of 1939.)
Goldstein hoped for a change in the policy--there would be none.
- Israel Goldstein (June 18, 1896 – 1986) was an influential Jewish leader in the U.S. and worldwide as a Rabi (and head of the New York Board of Rabis), head of the Jewish National Fund (elected in 1933), head of the Zionist Organization of America (elected 1943), and one of the founders of Brandeis University. The full text of the publication--which was printed sometime between March 30, 1944 and May 30, 1944--is included below. I can find no mention of the communication online.
Notes
1. Goldstein wrote in his memoirs that the rules and restrictions of the White Paper on Jewish immigration were being "rigidly and brutally enforced". --My World as a Jew: The Memoirs of Israel Goldstein, Volume 2, pg 47.
[“Like another black curtain about to be rolled down upon the last hope of escape, the White Paper of 1939 ominously threatens to close all further migration to Palestine,”--Judge Morris Rothenburg, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, http://www.jta.org/1943/09/13/archive/dr-israel-goldstein-elected-president-of-zionist-organization-of-america]
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