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Hungary Conscripts Jewish Women for Forced Labor; Gestapo Enforces Anti-jewish Laws

May 9, 1944
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All Jewish women in Hungary between 17 and 30 years of age must report for manual labor, under a new decree issued by the Hungarian Government, the Nazi Transocean news agency reported today.

Other reports reaching here from Hungary during the week-end reveal that the Gestapo, distrusting the efficiency of Hungarian officials, has assigned its own gents to enforce anti-Jewish measures in a number of Hungarian towns. This step was taken on the pretext that “special security” measures were required in these localise because of the presence of German troops.

A proposal that Jews be exchanged for Hungarians residing in the United States and in Latin American countries is published in the Budapest newspaper Esti Ujsag. The paper says that this proposal was made in Stockholm.

Jewish organizations in Switzerland today received reports stating that the position of the Jews in Hungary is going from bad to worse and that mass-arrests of healthy Jews are taking place all over the country following the “liquidation” of their enterprises. Many Hungarian Jews are attempting to reach Turkey through Rumania and Bulgaria, one report said adding that a number of Jews have been arrested by Rumanian frontier officials on the Rumanian-Hungarian frontier. Those arrested were delivered to the Gestapo and their fate remains unknown, the report declared.

JEWS ARRESTED IN TRANSYLVANIA; MORE ANTI-JEWISH ORDERS ISSUED

The Budapest radio today announced that the German “security police” have arrested 78 leading Jews in Kiloszvar (Kluj.) capital of Transylvania. No reason for the arrests is given. The broadcast also reported that a number of Jews in Kiloszvar here arrested during the week-end for not wearing yellow badges. Others have been fined from fifty dollars to thirty days imprisonment for failing to display their yellow badge more conspicuously.

A new anti-Jewish decree announced over Hungarian radio stations today prohibits Jews to produce or process any goods which are sold under government monopoly. Licenses held by Jews engaged in these industries are automatically revoked, the announcement said. The broadcast also reported that two Hungarian non-Jews have been arrested in Budapest on the charge that they “were trying to help Jews conceal their property.”

Budapest newspapers reaching here report that while “liquidating” many Jewish-owned enterprises, the Hungarian Government decided that leather factories owned by Jews must continue their operations because of war conditions. “Production controllers have been appointed for all these factories in order to see that their production is not decreased.

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