"JEW DEALING"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 41, 18 February 1943, Page 5

"JEW DEALING"

RANSOMS TO NAZIS

Racket Given Death Stroke By Latest Decree N.Z. Press Association. —Copyright Rec. 11 a.m. LONDON, Feb. 17. One of Germany's most profitable vocations, "Jew dealing," is about to disappear, reports The Times correspondent on the German frontier. Jew dealers continually travelled between the Reich and neutral countries on behalf of the Gestapo, persuading friends abroad to pay fabulous ransoms in foreign currency* for Jews who were held in custody in Germany. A notorious Jew dealer who has been most active in neutral capitals during the last two years has revealed that the death stroke against the racket was struck by Hitler with the decree that Jews should be eradicated wherever they could be seized. More than 30,000 Jews have been liquidated in the Reich and in occupied countries since October 15, 1942. Action began in Berlin in the first week in December, when Jews and Jewesses, irrespective of age, status and health, were dragged from apartments, hospitals, sanitoria and nursing homes. Many of those deported were over 70 years of age and Jewish homes for the aged were almost emptied of inmates. No records were kept and therefore not the slightest news is obtainable of their fate.