Jewish Men and Women Sent to Forced Labor in Coal Mines in Czech Protectorate

Twelve hundred Jews, including young girls and married women, have been sent to forced labor in the coal mines at Moravska-Ostrava and Karvin, in the Czech Protectorate, it was reported here today.

The Jews are forced to work twelve hours daily and are paid only fifteen percent of the wage received by the other miners. They do not receive all of their meager salaries. Part is paid in food, for which exorbitant prices are charged, while the remainder is payable in government bonds which will be redeemable after the war.

It was also reported today that scores of Jews hiding in the Petra Spas, in Slovakia, to escape deportation have been arrested. The Grenzbote, pro-Nazi Slovak newspaper received here today, urges a general round-up of all Jews it alleges are hiding in the mountains.

Meanwhile, the Gardista, organ of the Hlinka Guard, Slovakian storm-troop organization, which reached here today, complains that only 56,000 of Slovakia’s 90,000 Jews have been deported so far. It demands that the law delaying the deportation of Jews essential to the country’s economy be abolished. The Bratislava radio today broadcast an announcement that the Slovakian Minister of Finance has frozen all bank deposits over 2,000 crowns belonging to Jews still remaining in the country, in order to cover the extraordinary tax on Jewish property. According to previous reports, this tax was levied to finance the deportation of all the Jews in Slovakia.

Other reports from the Protectorate disclose that M. Zwicker, eighty-year old president of the Brno Jewish Community, has been sent to the fortress prison of Theresienstadt, where the German occupation authorities have concentrated thousands of Czech Jews.