NAZIS AND JEWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23886, 14 August 1939, Page 8

NAZIS AND JEWS

The decree of expulsion issued against the entire Jewish population of Bohemia and Moravia, estimated at sixty thousand, adds another chapter to the terrible latter-day history of this unfortunate race in Europe in its subjection to Nazi persecution. Sweeping restrictions on the Jews were imposed by the so-called "Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia," Baron von Neurath, in June last. They were forbidden to buy real estate or take part in commercial enterprises. That

was a mere preliminary. Now they are to be congregated, according to cabled report, in Prague, for deportation. So the tragedy of the Jewish people, forced to become refugees upon the face of the earth from Germany, Austria, and now Czechoslovakia, in exemplification of what man's stark inhumanity to man under fanatical direction can achieve in this twentieth century, is carried remorselessly on. The sufferings which these people undergo have been vividly described, and yet much of the miserable story has been left to the imagination. Within a week of the German annexation of Austria in March, 1938, Marshal Goering proclaimed that Vienna should be cleared of Jews in four years. But the Nazi administration set to work to speed up the business.- As Professor Norman Bentivich has recently written —"The whole community was deprived of its property and its means of livelihood from top to bottom: from the house of Rothschild to the humblest workman and shopkeeper. For over a year the process of incarceration and ruthless expulsion has been carried out without a break. The result is ruin, amazing even in the record of Nazi thoroughness." At the time of the German annexation the Jewish population of Austria was estimated at nearly 200,000, of whom 185,000 were in Vienna. Today the number of Jews in the country is estimated at 90,000. The migration has been maintained at an average level of between seven thousand and eight thousand a month. A very large proportion of the refugees have turned to countries, under British administration. Up to the end of April last Great Britain had admitted over 7500. The lot of the residue still in Vienna has been pictured in deplorable terms, more than half of the men, women and children having to be fed by the community, which has meant only one meal a day. To quote Professor Bentivich again: "The remnant of the community of nearly 200,000 which contributed much to the science, the art, the gaiety, and the commerce of Vienna lives to-day a stark and hopeless existence. It still includes some eminent men who were famous in the realms of medicine, learning, music and drama, but they cannot exercise their talents. They are waiting for the opportunity when they, too, can leave and bring a contribution to some other country. Vienna will be perhaps 'Judenrein'. (cleared of Jews) at the end of 1940. Vienna and the Reich will be the poorer for that purge." And now it seems the tsorry tale of the Jews at Vienna is to be extended and repeated at Prague.