More than 130 Jews from Luxemburg who are scheduled to receive United States immigration visas from the American consulate in Barcelona are now locked in railway coaches at the French-Spanish border station of Hendaye and are not being permitted to enter Spain unless they can produce transit visas. The French frontier authorities have notified the refugees that if they are unable to secure Spanish transit visas by Monday, they will be transferred to a concentration camp near Bayonne or Paris, or deported to Poland.
The party includes women, children and aged who left Luxemburg hurriedly last week in order to complete all arrangements for their journey to the United States, so that they might escape being deported to Poland together with the other Luxemburg Jews who have no prospects for overseas emigration. The Spanish authorities are refusing transit Visas unless the American Consul in Barcelona issues a letter stating that all the refugees will be granted the American visas which they are scheduled to receive. Representatives of the Joint Distribution Committee at Barcelona and at the Spanish frontier station Irun are making strong efforts to prevent the return of the group from the frontier and to secure their admission into Spain.
Meanwhile, about 200 aged men and women, confined in the Ulfingen Monastery are the only Jews remaining in Luxemburg. They are crowded into quarters too small to accommodate more than half of them and as a result many are forced to live in unused stables.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
