The projected central emigration office for Jews will be established within a week, possibly in the former building of a Jewish fraternal order, it was reliably learned today.
At the same time it was reported that Herr Eichmann, a Storm Troop official who in Vienna earned the sobriquet “Czar of the Jews,” will be placed in charge of the office. If Eichmann or one of his type guides the destiny of the German Jews there is no doubt that Vienna’s story of panic flight and continuous harassing of the Jews until in desperation they smuggled themselves across forbidden frontiers with false passports and other illegal devices, will be repeated on a Reich-wide scale.
It is pointed out here that the new unified emigration office will be ideally suited to the needs of the Nazi radicals wanting to “turn on the pressure.” While Field Marshal Hermann Goering, whose anti-Semitism is considerably watered down by economic considerations, reportedly was to be appointed to control Jewish emigration, the Gestapo blandly proceeded with its own emigration plans in the provinces even while Ministerial Director Helmut Wohlthat of the Economics Ministry amicably discussed with Director George Rublee of the Intergovernmental Refugee Bureau the orderly emigration of Jews.
Last week the Gestapo ordered 300 Jews of Breslau to charter a vessel and leave for Shanghai within the week, the police providing funds for the evacuation by confiscating the money of the city’s three wealthiest Jews. It happens that the plan fell through because the steamship company demanded a foreign exchange guarantee for return passage in the event the transport was not admitted to Shanghai. The Breslau Jews, however, are under no illusion as to the temporary nature of their reprieve.
Pressure against Jews released from concentration camps has not been lessened. Thousands continue to besiege Jewish organizations and consulates, seeking loopholes through the Reich’s emigration barriers, under constant threat of re-arrest and new terms in concentration camps. It is hoped that the situation might change after the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee conference, which opened in London today, and it is the prayer of every German Jew that a plan for orderly emigration will be adapted forthwith until no Jews are left to whom the plan is applicable.
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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.
