The first post-war immigrant ship from Germany, the Marine Flasher, will land at New York tomorrow morning bringing 867 displaced persons from Europe, the majority of them Jews, who comprise the first group of refugees permitted to enter the United States on immigrant visas under President Truman’s directive.
The Jewish immigrants will be met at the pier by representatives of the HIAS, National Refugee Service, Council of Jewish Women, Vaad Haatzala, International Rescue and Relief Committee and other organizations who provided corporate affidavits for them and paid their transportation costs. Passage for 444 of the 867 arrivals was arranged by the Joint Distribution Committee.
Among the immigrants are about 70 orphans whose parents were murdered by the Nazis. Among the passengers are 343 who received their visas under the Polish quota; 218 from Germany; 45 from Latvia; 31 from Soviet Russia; 30 from Hungary; 22 from Yugoslavia; 27 from Czechoslovakia and 17 from Rumania. A second immigrant ship, the Marine Perch, is now en route to the United States, having left Germany a week ago.
Many of the immigrants will be reunited with their relatives, but those who have no relatives will be taken to shelters arranged for them by the Jewish organizations. The President Hotel in Long Beach, Long Island, has been set aside as a residence for homeless immigrants who arrive on corporate affidavits of the orthodox organization Vaad Hatzala, while the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society will place many of the arrivals in its own shelter in New York.
The Joint Distribution Committee today announced that it expended over $95,000 for the passage of more than 400 immigrants as well as for processing in Germany during the last month of more than 1,000 Jewish persons for immigration to the United States. The International Rescue and Relief Committee revealed that it paid transportation costs for a group of Polish-Jewish labor leaders on the “Marine Flasher,” who distinguished themselves in anti-Nazi activity, and spent several years in concentration camps in Germany.
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