Fascist police are disguising themselves as Jewish refugees in a new campaign to trap priests in Italian border towns who are suspected of aiding prisoners to escape, the Swiss newspaper Basler Nachrichten said in a dispatch reported today to the Office of War Information.
The dispatch said the police actions has been accompanied by articles in the Fascist press which are intended to “make an end of tolerance toward the Jews” and which brand such an attitude as “betrayal of race.”
In one village near the frontier, the Swiss paper related, an “unknown” person who professed to be a Jew approached the priest and asked to be sheltered from persecution. The priest took him in and was “on the point of conducting him to the frontier” when the “Jew” revealed himself as a militia officer and arrested the priest.
A similar incident occurred in another locality, said the dispatch. Here, however, the priest “scented danger” and did not commit himself, but he was nevertheless arrested by the “police informer.” Parishioners greeted his release a short time later with ringing church bells, the dispatch added.
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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.
