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British Repatriates Report Mass-suicide of Jews in Vittel to Avoid Deportation

August 11, 1944
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British civilian repatriates who arrived here today from Lisbon on the Swedish exchange ship Drottningholm, related heart-breaking stories of Jews interned at hotels in Vittel, France, committing mass-suicide in order to be spared deportation by the Germans to extermination camps in Poland.

Many of the Jews leaped to their death from the windows of the hotels when the Gestapo raided the places in hunt for Jews, the repatriates said. Others poisoned themselves and their children as soon as it became known that Jews in Vittel were being rounded up for deportation to Poland.

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