JEWS IN EUROPE

Grey River Argus, 26 November 1942, Page 3

JEWS IN EUROPE

Being Exterminated BY THE GERMANS. LONDON, Nov. 24. The Geneva' correspondent of the “Palestine Post” says: Jews oi Europe are no longer being persecuted, but systematically exterminated. Jewish populations in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, numbering more than a million before the war, are being liquidated rapidly; , also Jews from France, Holland and' Belgium. In fact, Jews everywhere except in Italy. Sweden, Hungary and Switzerland are in process of annihilation. Instances include the recent German machine-gunning of 24,000 Jewish men. women and children who were taken from Riga hotels, stripped, and mown down, after being forced to dig their own graves. Systematic extermination of Jews from Polish towns continues. Thousands of Jewish children, also aged people were murdered wholesale last spring, after Himmler visited Warsaw. Twenty-seven thousand of 30,000 Jews at Kielce were killed or disappeared during deportations. Fifteen hundred Jews were burnt alive in synagogue at Bialystok. Quisling’s Finance Ministry announced that the confiscation of Jewish property in Norway will be carried out by declaring all Jews bankrupt. “The Times’s” Stockholm correspondent says: Jewish firms will be wound un, unless the nosition of nonJewish employees is jeopardised, upon which trusted Quisling supporters will be made receivers. The Jewish shops will be sold by public auction. According to information received by the Polish Government in London, Himmler, chief of the Gestapo, has ordered the extermination of half the Jewish copulation of Poland to be completed by the- end of 1942. Germans have mobilised special battalions under the command of S.S. men to carry out the plan. Victims caught in the streets are taken to a cemetery and shot. Others ate loaded into goods trucks at the rate of 150 to a truck normally intended for 40 people. The floor of the truck i is covered with a thick layer of lime splashed with water, and the doors are sealed. The trains are left at sidings for several days and the people are packed so tightly that some die of suffocation. These are left inside the truck together with those slowly dying from the fumes of lime and chlorine, and lack of air, water, and food. Those still surviving are sent to special camps at Treblinka, Belizea and Sobibor, where they are mass slaughtered. By the end of September. 1942, the Polish Government states that a quarter of a milI’on Jews had been eliminated under the guise of “re-settlement in the East.’’ J Berlin radio has announced that 15 Dutchmen were executed at Arnhem for acts of sabotage against the army of occupation. Another 14 Czechs, aged between 22 and 25, were executed “for helping Germany’s enemies and opposing the new order in Bohemia and Moravia. GERMANS SELL EXIT PERMITS. TO PEOPLE OF OCCUPIED TERRITORIES. ■8.0.W. RUGBY, November 24. Lord Seibourne, in the Lords, said evidence had been accumulating for many months that the German Government was organising a considerable traffic in the sale of exit permits from occupied countries, particularly the Netherlands, in order to increase its resources of foreign currency. Relations and associates in Allied and neutral countries of persons in enemy-controlled Europe were informed that the persons concerned would be granted exit facilities. If payment were made in currency of a neutral country. The sums demanded were in the neighbourhood of 5000 sterling per head. In a number of cases, it was stated expressly, or by implication, that» if the money were not paid, those concerned would be treated as hostages and with their families be sent to concentration camps. It is clear the matter has reached the dimensions of a regular organised traffic. Apart from the detriment to the financial blockade, which any condonation of this traffic would involve, the British Government felt to acquiesce would in the long run prove the worst service that could be rendered to potential victims in occupied territories, in that the appetite of the blackmailer would be increased. Consequently, Britain after consultation with the Netherlands and America, decided she must regard anv persons in any wav connected with this traffic' as engaged in transactions for the benefit of the enemy. The Government therefore makes clear, firstly, it will proclaim as enemies any persons in neutral countries'. or ..other territories to which the statutoiw list applies, who act ( as brokers or agents in the traffic. Secondly, persons in. such countries or territories, who pay money to the enemy or agents render themselves liable to such legitimate penalties and counter measures as may be within the power of the United Nations to take. Thirdly, any persons hi the 'United iKngdom making .payment which will benefit the enemy are liable to prosecution. The Netherlands Government states that a tentative approach was made by the enemy to emigrate 500 Dutchmen on the payment of 5,000.000 Swiss francs, on condition the Netherlands Government would guarantee the interest on the loan, which was to be obtained from neutral bankers. The Netherlands, after consultation with Britain and America, reluctantly decided it could not yie-d to German attempts at extortion.