"ONE OF GOD'S FOOLS"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 95, 18 April 1941, Page 11

"ONE OF GOD'S FOOLS"

Visitor Who Wants To Get oer To London

bd OU can put me down as one of the greatest fools living," said Dr. Elsley Zeitlyn, who is visiting New Zealand as Official Representative of the Polish Relief Fund and the Polish Jewish Refugee Fund (London). "Here I am;" he said to a representative of The Listener, "12,000 miles away from my wife and family in Lordon, cut off from my profession and doing voluntary work, subject to all the inconveniences of travel in a world torn by war, and probably compelled to stay here because of shipping difficulties." The interviewer suggested that he was not so much of a fool as a most unfortunate man. "No," -he said, "I’m God’s Fool." At George Lansbury’s Request Dr. Zeitlyn prefers to be called Mr. Zeitlyn. His name is of Dutch origin. Contrary to what one might expect, he is not Polish, but a native-born Englishman, and was for 34 years a member of the English Bar-Middle Temple, the Northern Circuit, and a pupil of F. E. Smith (the Earl of Birkenhead).

When George Lansbury established the Polish Jewish Refugee Fund prior to the war, after a visit to Poland where he was greatly perturbed at the plight of the Jews, he asked Mr, Zeitlyn to be its Hon. Treasurer. Then, after the Germans over-ran Poland and the plight of the Polish Jews became desperate indeed, there was established a fund with a wider appeal, known as the Polish Relief Fund, for non-sectarian purposes. The Polish Relief Fund has the Polish Ambassador as its President, Sir Horace Rumbold (a former British Ambassador) as Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Reginald McKenna as Hon. Treasurer, Sir William Crawford as Chairman of the Appeal Committee, and a council which includes names of outstanding people in the political, social, financial, and religious worlds, including the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, Lord Halifax, the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, the Duke of Norfolk,, -Dr. Hugh Dalton (Minister of Economic Warfare), Sir Stafford Cripps, the Bishop of London, and many others. As representative for this Fund, Mr. Zeitlyn visited Hungary, Rumania, and Yugoslavia from December, 1939, to March, 1940, collaborating with the work |

of the Red Cross. In a radio talk he will shortly be giving from 2YA he hopes to tell something of this work and of the terrible conditions in Poland to-day. Wrecked off African Coast Last July he left London to organise appeals for the joint Polish Relief Fund and the earlier Polish Jewish Refugee Fund, in Australia and New Zealand. He tcok four months to get to Sydney, largely because he was wrecked off South West Africa. In Sydney he organised a committee known as the Polish War Victims Relief Fund under the chairmanship of Sir Francis Anderson, and with Sir Alfred Davidson, of the Bank of New South Wales, and D, D. Tait, as Hon.

Treasurers, Then, early in March, he came on to New Zealand, and collaborate ing with the National Patriotic Board, he is making an appeal solely to members of the New Zealand Jewish community. "The generous spirit I have met everywhere has heartened and comforted me," said Mr, Zeitlyn. "I have not felt happier anywhere than in this part of precious England." As it appears unlikely that he will be able to get back to London, he has become a member of the New South Wales Bar so that he will be able to live after his resources are depleted. But he is anxious to get back to his wife and family, particularly to his twin sons of 19. One of them is in the Home Guard, and the other is an officer in the Navy.