As Hitler met the French plenipotentiaries at Compiegne to dictate peace terms feared foreshadowing Nazi domination of all France, the flight of German emigres and French Jews from the stricken country was intensified today.
Refugees were reported to be pouring across the Spanish border in disorderly flight. Baron Eugene de Rothschild of Paris, with only five centime on his person, was said to be among a group which arrived at San Sebastian.
Another member of the famous banking family, Baron Robert de Rothschild, philanthropist and a leader in refugee aid in Paris, arrived in England yesterday, himself now a refugee. He had joined the French army last September.
Baron Robert, together with Henri Bernstein, the playwright, were among 1,300 persons who made the voyage from a Biscayne port aboard a small ship which normally carries 180 passengers. A newspaper correspondent on the ship told of seeing Baron Rothschild, “once one of the richest men in the world, patiently standing in line, plate in hand, waiting for a dish of rice and meat.”
Meanwhile, concern was expressed over the fate of the French Jews and German emigres caught in the German-occupied part of France.
Former Premier Leon Blum, leader of the French Socialists, has been seized by the Nazis and placed in a concentration camp, according to reports here. (A previous Rome dispatch, quoting the newspaper Lavoro Fascista, said Blum had arrived in Switzerland on Monday evening and had gone to a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva.)
Foreign refugees interned in a camp in Paris were prevented by French guards from escaping before the advancing Nazi troops, according to the periodical New Statesman and Nation.
“One of the most terrible stories out of France,” the periodical said, “is that of the internment camp (name unclear in the cable) at Paris where, I am told, French guards remained on duty, preventing foreign refugees from joining the exodus of the French population until it was too late for them to escape the advancing Nazi troops.”
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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.
