A direct Allied warning to France in view of the new anti-Jewish decrees announced in Paris yesterday was demanded today by Prof. Selig Brodetsky, addressing a meeting of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. At the same time Prof. Brodetsky revealed that the British Foreign Office was approached on Friday with an appeal that it intervene to rescue the remnants of European Jewry.
The Nazi-controlled Paris radio yesterday reported a statement by the Vichy Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, to the effect that a vast “legislative” program to deprive all French Jews of their last vestiges of civil rights had been drafted.
The broadcast declared that all foreign Jews still residing in France-thousands have been deported by the Nazis to eastern occupied territories – will be committed to labor camps, Jews who became Frenchmen after August, 1926, will be deprived of their naturalization and the naturalization of all Jews will be “reviewed” as far back as 1868.
De Pellepoix was said by the radio to have predicted special schools for Jewish children, possible introduction of ghettos, easier divorce for non Jews from Jewish spouses, and prohibition of mixed marriages, which the Paris newspaper Le Matin recently reported have already been prohibited, and a yellow Mogen David badge for all Jews. The Vichy Government, de Pellepoix was quoted as saying, would be allowed to solve the “Jewish problem” by itself, though presumably foreign Jews and prominent anti-Nazis would be handed over to Germany.
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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.
