Jews Fleeing Slovakia As Anti-semitism Rises; Separatist Move Laid to Hitler

(Boris Smolar, Chief European Correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, was in Praha, completing a survey of several Central European countries, when the Slovakian separatist outbreak began on Friday. His dispatch was wirelessed from Paris immediately on his arrival in the French capital by airplane from Praha.)

The 80,000 Jews in Slovakia have been thrown into panic by the separatist outbreaks. The majority are liquidating their affairs and hurriedly transferring their belongings to Praha, where they hope to find safety until they can emigrate. The Slovakian Jews feel themselves to be in a position similar to that of the Jews in Sudetenland prior to its occupation by the Reich. Nazi flags are flying unmolested over many buildings, and anti-Semitism is assuming serious proportions, marked by bombing of Jewish stores and institutions.

(Reports reaching London said a bomb was thrown Friday night at the principal synagogue in Bratislava, but there were no casualties. Two Jewish-owned shops were completely wrecked by storm troopers and one shopkeeper was seized. An attempt was made to lynch a Jewish youth accused by German Nazis of firing a shot at a storm trooper, and the Jew was arrested. In Pilsen, two Fascists were killed by the premature explosion of a bomb they were planting in a Jewish cemetery hall. Czech police arrested 17 persons suspected of various anti-Semitic bombings in the provinces.)

Playing Slovakia against the Praha Government, Chancellor Adolf Hitler is believed to be paying huge sums to the Slovakian leaders to promote a separatist movement, resulting in Praha’s desperate act of dismissing Slovak Premier Josef Tiso and proclaiming martial law in Bratislava and elsewhere. (A completely new Cabinet was named, headed by Dr. Karol Sidor as Premier.)

In general, this correspondent found during his stay in Czecho-Slovakia that the Reich is forcing the Government to take orders from Berlin not only in foreign relations but in domestic affairs. Newspaper stands in Praha that refused to sell Julius Streicher’s Nuremberg anti-Semitic weekly, Der Stuermer, received threatening letters from Nuremberg as though Praha were a part of the Reich. All the stands, many of them unwillingly, are now consequently displaying Der Stuermer.

J.T.A. dispatches affecting the Reich and editorials unfavorable to the Reich in American and British newspapers are not permitted by the Czech censor to appear in Praha newspapers. This situation prevails despite the deep hatred which the average Czech, in contrast to the average Slovak, feels towards Germany.

An example of Germany’s influence in Praha is furnished by a personal experience. Departure of an airplane from Praha for Paris was delayed for 40 minutes while this correspondent was taken into a special room in the aerodrome by plainclothesmen and all his notes and documents covering a survey of the Czecho-Slovak situation, including notes on interviews with the highest Czech officials, were thoroughly searched and examined.

The search was started after the writer had passed through the usual customs and currency examinations. As he was about to embark on the plane, two plainclothes agents appeared and ordered him, with all his luggage, into an isolated room. There, paying no attention to other articles, they began a detailed examination of all manuscripts and notes, scrutinizing even those found on this correspondent’s person, demanding an explanation where the contents were not clear and setting some aside for confiscation.

Only after the writer had threatened to lodge a protest with the American Minister and with Dr. Jiri Havelka, Chief of the Cabinet Chancellery, whom he had interviewed, the agents, who knew from the writer’s passport that he was the only American among the plane’s 16 passengers, disappeared into the next room for consultation and later emerged with the announcement that he was free to leave. The agents returned all the notes and apologized, declaring the search had been the result of special orders and not on their own initiative.

While the detention puzzled this correspondent, it did not surprise the other passengers, who later explained that the search was not due so much to Czecho-Slovakia’s sensitiveness as to what might appear in the foreign press as to the fact that the Czech Government, being completely under Germany’s influence, permitted German agents to intervene freely in virtually all internal Czecho-Slovakian activities. Activities of the Nazi agents, the correspondent was informed, includes surveillance of passengers going from Praha to Paris by plane, since such passengers are usually anti-Nazi and frequently carry anti-German information which the Reich authorities would like to obtain.