Speech #780026499

This exposes us and Britain and the Dominions to a sorry dilemma. either to open wide our gates. thereby endangering the delicate population balance within our respective countries. or consign millions of human beings to further martyrdom. and keep the world burdened with a problem of high explosive capacity. Both alternatives are equally unsatisfactory. and the creation of a Jewish state for those Jews who want and need it is the only adequate way out. Even now. in the midst of the war. the governments of the United Nations are faced with the problem of refugees who have escaped the Axis and have not yet found any permanent abode. and of those who might be saved from the Axis and preserved from threatening destruction. Quite recently an arrangement was announced by which several thousand such men and women would be taken out of Bulgaria. The press announced that Rumania expressed her readiness to let a certain number of Jews leave the country. In Prance. in Turkey. and in Portugal. many more thousands of such individuals can be found. most of them Jews. Many tragedies have already taken place. with these refugees trying to find refuge in some country. sailing from port to port in unseaworthy vessels. being rejected everywhere..and finding graves at the bottom of the sea. The note which we sent to Great Britain on February 25 seems to deal with this immediate problem. but it deals with it in an unsatisfactory manner. It avoids mention of the Jewish refugee problem. at present the largest one by far. and it assumes wrongly that all refugees will be able to return to their old homes after the war. What is needed is that Jewish refugees from Axis domination. who have not yet been settled elsewhere. and other Jews whom it will be possible to rescue from inevitable doom in Axis lands. be enabled to proceed to Palestine. Palestine lies near the centers where these Jews are at present. and their transportation there could be arranged with far less inconvenience to the war effort of the United Nations than their transportation to any outlying region. At the same time. this salvaging action could be undertaken without infringing the immigration laws and regulations of any other country. and would be in keeping with the established international policy of regarding Palestine as the national home for the Jews. In one more respect is immediate action needed. Jews who are citizens of the United States.