Their future still uncertain, 30,000 out of this capital’s 200,000 Jews have remained in the city prepared to face whatever dangers the new situation may hold for them personally, George Axelsson, New York Times correspondent, disclosed in a Paris dispatch today.
Most of these Jews are poor, small shopkeepers in the Temple and Belleville quarters and they are beginning timidly to open up their shops, the correspondent said.
The Soviet Consulate has been submerged with requests from Jews of Russian birth that the consulate place them under its protection. Such action has not been taken by the Consulate “pending receipt of instructions from Moscow.”
Jews applying for visas continue efforts to obtain such papers from the United States and other consulates which have remained open. The consulates, however, have not been able to expedite a single demand because wire and postal communications with other countries have been almost completely cut off.
Apparently all of the more well-to-do Jews in Paris managed to leave before the Germans came, the dispatch said. Some of their apartments in the 16th and 17th Arrondissements have been requisitioned for German civilian officials.
The correspondent said that rumors of a census of the Jewish population in Paris are pure invention. A form of census was taken at the end of June for the purpose of establishing food cards and the information required no reference to nationality or race.
Many officials have remained at the Israelite Consistory in the Rue St. Georges. One of them told the correspondent: “We confidently expect our fate will be decided by the French.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
