German Command Orders Rome Officials to Establish Concentration Camp for Jews

The German radio reported today that the municipal authorities in Rome have been ordered by the German military command there to establish a “concentration center” large enough to accommodate 16,000 Jews. The broadcast admitted that mass-arrests and deportations of Jews continue, and added that some Jews in Rome are temporarily permitted to remain in their homes under police surveillance awaiting transfer to the projected “concentration center.”

The London press reports today that the Observatory Romano, organ of the Pope, has published a second criticism of the German administration in Rome for deporting Jews from Italy. The second protest against the German anti-Jewish measures followed the formal representations which the Pope made personally last week to the German Ambassador at the Vatican City. It asserts that the Germans are showing no mercy to women and children during the deportations.

The British Foreign Office is criticized by the Manchester Guardian today for its statement yesterday regarding aid for Jewish and other refugees. The article points out that the statement of the Foreign Office contains figures which are irrelevant to the actual work of rescuing Jews from Nazi lands. “We are even told in this document that the Palestine administration offered to receive 34,000 potential Jewish refugees, while the actual truth is that the administration being bound under the White Paper to admit 75,000 Jews to Palestine has kept out the immigrants with such zeal that it is now 34,000 short of the permitted total,” “the article says.

The Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees is also criticized in the article for its inactivity in saving Jews from German-occupied and Nazi-dominated countries. “The slowness of the Intergovernmental Committee is painful, and the addition of twenty more states as members of this committee will hardly quicken the pace of its work,” the Guardian writes.