800 Czech Jews in Poland Face Return to Prague

More than 800 Czech Jews who crossed into Poland after Germany’s occupation of Prague have been threatened with deportation to the German protectorate, according to information received by the Paris office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

The threatened deportation is apparently in retaliation for Germany’s expulsion of Polish Jews. All 800 are now in Kattowice as refugees. Their deportation would spell probable internment in German concentration camps. The Kattowice Jewish community is seeking to avert the action and has suggested that the Polish Government establish a refugee camp for them which the community would undertake to maintain.

Meanwhile, Morris C. Troper, European director for the J.D.C., ordered a special representative to proceed to the territories neighboring the German-Polish “no-man’s-lands” in order to ascertain the exact situation of the several thousand Polish Jews reported to have been expelled from the Reich, barred from Poland and wandering in the border area without food or shelter.

Mr. Troper communicated with the British Council for German Jewry urging greater participation by the British Jews in relief for refugees from the Reich who are now in Poland, including those from former Czechoslovakia, and also the deportees who have been marooned at the Polish border station of Zbonszyn for more than seven months.

At the same time, the J.D.C. granted a further $35,000 to the Jewish Relief Committee in Warsaw in view of the committee’s difficult financial position. A delegation of Polish Jewish leaders appeared this week before the Minister of Interior appealing for liquidation of the Zbonszyn camp, but the appeal was flatly rejected.

The expulsion of refugees from Albania, scheduled for last Wednesday, has been postponed until June 23, the J.D.C. was informed from Durazzo.