Evacuation of Jews from Italian-held Balkan Territory to Italy is Urged

A suggestion that disposition of the Jews in the Italian-occupied parts of Yugoslavia, Greece and other Balkan countries be covered in the armistice conditions which the Allied nations are to offer to Italy, is made today in the Swedish newspaper Aftontidningen.

“Unless these Jews are evacuated into Italy under the armistice terms, they will all be left to certain massacre by the Nazis who will remain the only occupational power in Balkan countries after Italy withdraws its armies from there,” the paper writes. It emphasizes that the evacuation of the Jews from Balkan territories garrisoned by Italians can be arranged along the same lines as the evacuation of the Italian soldiers from those territories.

“The Jews in the Italian-held Balkan lands are in mortal danger in case of Italian capitulation,” the article continues. “As soon as Italy abandons the Balkans, the Jews in the territories there which are at present under Italian military administration, will be taken over by the Nazi Gestapo police troops and will face the same brutal fate as all other Jews under Nazi occupation.”

The Swedish paper quotes an article in the Nazi organ Westdeutscher Beobachter complaining that the Jews who live in Italian-garrisoned Balkan towns are “relatively free” despite the fact that they must wear the yellow Mogen David. The Aftontidningen also reports that when the Italians occupied Dalmatic, Croatia and Herzegovina, they saved thousands of Jews there, mainly Sephardic, who were hiding in the woods and helped them to cross into Italy.

The Swedish newspaper at the same time quotes the German press as reporting that in Slovenia and Bosnia not a single Jew is left. “The Nazis and the pro-Nazi Ustachis in the so-called independent state of Croatia have also exterminated all the Jews in Zagreb and other Croatian cities,” the Aftontidningen states.