Hungary Offers to Permit 1,000 Jews to Leave Daily if Allied Bombings Cease

The Hungarian Government, through its controlled press, today notified Archbishop Spellman of New York that the Jews of Hungary will be spared and permitted to leave the country on condition that the Allies cease bombing Hungarian cities.

A two-point offer to this effect is made in the Budapest newspaper Esti Ujsag, organ of the Foreign Ministry. The offer, addressed to Archbishop Spellman in reply to his recent broadcast to Hungary appealing for mercy for the Jews, stipulates:

1. The deportations of Jews from Hungary will definitely cease “as soon as Anglo-Saxon airmen discontinue the killing of innocent workers, women and children.”

2. Speedy diplomatic negotiations would be initiated by the Hungarian Government to send 1,000 Jews daily to any railway station at any designated frontier where they would be delivered to American representatives.

Addressing itself to the Catholic Archbishop, the official government organ says: “The war cannot be won by the bombing of Hungary, whereas the U. S. Congress, the American press, the State Department and the American public can show that they are with you in your effort to save the Jews.”

(German newspapers reaching here today carry articles “advising” the people in Rumania not to be under the impression that the presence of Jews in Rumanian towns protects these towns from being bombed by the Allies. Recent raids on Rumania have proven this, the Nazi papers argue. They urge the Rumanians, therefore to cease treating the Jews with consideration.)

NEW DEPORTATIONS PLANNED, INTERNATIONAL RED CROSE REPORTS

The International Red Cross today informed Allied representatives here that 12,700 more Jews have been herded into new ghettos in Hungary for deportation to extermination camps. The new ghettos are located at Galanta, Elsekuguar and Nagysurany.

Information reaching here from Hungary reveals that a large number of titled Jews and of Jewish industrial leaders have been interned by the Gestapo in the village of Kistarcosa where they are being offered exit visas and a seat on a plane to Lisbon in exchange for assigning their property to Germans. In this way the Germans are securing “legal” control of Jewish industrial enterprises.

The Budapest radio reports that in an effort to save themselves from deportation, Jews throughout Hungary continue to besiege Catholic institutions for baptism. “There were more applications for baptism in the course of last week than during the last fifteen years.” the broadcast said.

An Association of Baptised Jews of Hungarian Citizenship was formed in Hungary this week under a government decree, the Hungarian Telegraphic Agency reports. The new body will function along the same lines as the Association of Hungarian Jews which serves as a liason group between the Jews and the authorities. Converts are forbidden to belong to the latter association.

Hungarian newspapers reaching here today report that a number of Jews were executed publicly in Bereg, Subcarpathia. They were charged with cooperating with partisans who are in contact with the Russian Army at the gates of the Carpathian mountains.