The British Foreign Office, at the request of UNRRA, has decided to investigate the charge made yesterday by Lieut. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, UNRRA director in Germany, that a secret Jewish force is organizing a mass exodus of Jews from Poland and other parts of Europe, aimed at bringing them into Palestine.
The Foreign Office’s investigation will be made through British diplomats in Poland and other Eastern European countries, and, if necessary, the matter may be referred to the Anglo-American inquiry committee on Palestine, it was reported here.
The London News Chronicle today demands an immediate probe of the Morgan allegations. In an editorial declaring that “the vague, and at the same time, alarmist statements clearly call for an immediate inquiry,” the paper says that it is hardly necessary at this juncture to dwell upon the misery already wrought in the world by nonsensical generalizations concerning the Jews. Morgan’s statement, it adds, “could only gravely harm UNRRA’s future, and it is to be hoped that Morgan’s allegations will be investigated promptly, and if found without substantial foundation, promptly and decisively repudiated.”
The Board of Deputies of British Jews today issued a statement expressing regret and astonishment at Morgan’s attempt to discount the evidence of persecution in view of official Polish and Czechoslovak statements. His reference to a Jewish plot to become a world force, coming after the Nuremberg evidence of the extermination of 6,000,000 Jews, is “not only a grotesque bogey, but highly uncharitable and unworthy when it comes from a head of an organization whose purpose is to bring comfort to the suffering victims of Nazi barbarity,” the board stated.
It is learned here that the agenda of the United Nations Assembly, which is to convene on January 10, includes a resolution on the refugee problem, proposing that an enlarged refugee organization be set up under the UNO Economic and Social Council, with the participation of a number of neutral nations.
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