"YOU SEE FIGURES: WE SEE FACES"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 230, 19 November 1943, Page 8

"YOU SEE FIGURES: WE SEE FACES"

Interview with Dr.

Michael

Traub

Life, New Zealanders are the best-fed people in the world. According to Dr. Michael Traub, Zionist delegate, who has spent the last four and a-half months among them, they are also the most ready to feed other people. In an interview with The Listener, before he left Wellington, Dr. Traub said that he had found us a most hospitable community, friendly and helpful, and added that if her climate were as kind as her New to New York

people, New Zealand would be a _ paradise: He had, of course, heard that he had encountered our worst in weather, but he thought he had heard the same thing in other countries -Britain, for example. Well, it was difficult to explain away the weather we have had during the last two or three months, and we did not. try. But we asked what his idea of good weather was. "Palestine in spring," he answered promptly. "I miss my Palestine sun." "But the sun doesn’t shine every day? Our soldiers say that they almost froze in Jerusalem during the winter." "Jerusalem is 2400 feet above the sea. It certainly is cold in winter, though snow falls about once in a generation. But when the end of winter comes, it is the end. In a few weeks, almost in a few days, the trees burst into bud andthe desert into flowers."

"And there are no relapses." "Very few. The sunshine remains for seven or eight months." Sorry To Be Leaving "So you are glad to be hurrying back again?" "No. I am sorry to be leaving New Zealand; very sorry. It is a most interesting country-very beautiful, very young, but in many ways most advanced. I should like to study it for two or three years instead of two or three months. But I came on a special mission, which I have fulfilled." "Satisfactorily?" "Yes. I am more than satisfied with your interest in my work, but a man who feels anything as keenly as I feel the fate of my people can never say that he has done enough anywhere." "Can you feel that it has been worth while coming to New Zealand at all-

that you have done as well here as you could have done anywhere else in the same time?" "Of that I am quite certain. I have had the most sympathetic recéption from all kinds of people: fromi* your Prime Minister and other menibers of the Government, from members of Parliament, from business and professional people, but also from the man in the street. One very gratifying fact has been the response of the clergy of all denominations. Perhaps they will accept this reference as the expression of my thanks. I realise that I have been

greatly helped by the fact that so many New Zealand soldiers have visited Palestine and seen our work at first hand." "You mean your colonising work there — especially your agricultural settlements?" "Yes, those first of all. But also our cities and the things we have done cul-turally-our university, our music, our public health services." Arabs And Jews "It is certainly the case that: our soldiers have been hospitably received in your Palestine settlements, and astonished by the things you have done there. They did prepare us for your visit to some extent; though most of them also like the Arabs." "So do the Jews. There is no hostility to Arabs among intelligent Zionists. Jews and Arabs have lived together for 2000 years. Not all, but neatly. an the lecatinued on next page).

(continued from previous page) friction during the last 10 or 15 years has been the work of German and Italian mischief-makers." "Have we then seen the end of that?" "We have seen the end of the Germans and of the Italians, but not of the mischief they have done." "Why did Britain restrict immigration?" "As a sop to the Arabs." "Appeasement?" "Certainly.. Nothing else at all. Appeasement to Arabs and to Hitler and Mussolini. Don’t forget that the White Paper restricting and finally terminating immigration was issued under the shadow of Munich. And don’t forget either that it was opposed by Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Amery, who were ashamed of it" The Open Door "Ts it then your primary mission in New Zealand to get the White Paper withdrawn?" "Yes; that is my first and most urgent task everywhere. I want to mobilise opinion in all the British Dominions in fayour of the open door." "And after that?" . "After ‘that the task is to keep the door open indefinitely-to implement the Balfour Declaration in full."

"And you feel that New Zealand does not yet realise the urgency of these tasks?" "IT do feel that. But I do not complain of it. How could you see these things»as a Jew sees them? In all its history New Zealand has not killed one man for a political opinion. It has never robbed people or tortured them for any reason at all-and hardly believes that any nation does. No, you don’t realise what this movement means to us, and you ought to thank God that you don’t. It means that you are yourselves too décent to understand. But in the meanwhile we are dying-being starved and tortured and murdered on such a vast scale that you almost think us lunatics when we give you figures." "We certainly find it difficult to believe in mass murder and systematic torture." "Of course you do. A million dead mean nothing to you. I am not sure that a million mean more than a figure to anybody. No man has ever seen a million dead. But your mind stops at figures. We see faces-relatives, friends, acquaintances; men, women and children; people we have known, people we have lived and worked with. That is what we see when we read that a hundred hostages have been shot or a_ thousand families rounded up. We want a home for them, a refuge from all this for ever. Palestine is that home. We can’t rest till it is ours again. I came to New Zealand to ask you to help us. I am going away convinced that you will."