The State Department’s complicated procedure in regard to issuing visas to refugees seeking admission into the United States is allowing Gestapo kidnap gangs in Lisbon to abduct anti-Nazi refugees and either murder them or ship them back to Germany where they are executed, it was charged here yesterday by Varian Fry, American social worker, when he disembarked from the Yankee Clipper.
For over a year Mr. Fry was European Director of the Emergency Rescue Committee with headquarters in France until he was expelled from that country by the Nazis in August. He said that he knew of ten refugees whom the Gestapo had shanghaied within the last two months. Gestapo agents, posing as local police, accost refugees on the street, order them into automobiles and speed away, he explained. Mr. Fry said that in at least one instance Washington’s red tape had cost a refugee his head.
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