As recently as April, 1944, on the eve of the Allied invasion of Europe, Nazi diplomats from all parts of the world were summoned to a special conference in Germany at which they discussed means of intensifying anti-Semitic activities in America and the Far East, as well as in Europe, it was revealed today before the International Military Tribunal.
British prosecutors submitted a German Foreign Office report on the meeting, which was dubbed a “Conference of Consultants on the Jewish Question,” Nazi representatives in China and Japan were among those present, and one of the chief items on the agenda was a discussion of the 20,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai.
One of the diplomats, calling for the complete extermination of the Jews, said that “the physical elimination of Eastern Jewry would deprive Jewry of its biological reserves.” He added that the “Jewish question must be solved not only by Germany, but internationally.”
A certain Von Tranden, the Foreign Office specialist on Jewish questions, urged intensification of the work of spreading anti-Jewish propaganda through diplomatic channels in various countries. Numerous speakers at the conference stressed the importance of disseminating anti-Semitism in such a fashion that it would not appear to be of German origin.
Another document, dated Oct. 2, 1942, linked the Gestapo and the Foreign Office to Rumanian Premier Ian Antonescu’s anti-Jewish activities. A Gestapo memorandum to Von Ribbentrop’s office reported that on that day 110,000 Jews were evacuated from Bukovina and Bessarabia to two forests near the Bug River. Deportation of these Jews, the report stated was being carried out at Antonescu’s orders for the purpose of “liquidating” them
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.
