Former Premier Leon Blum is living with his wife under house arrest in a tiny village in a woods somewhere in Germany, his daughter-in-law, Rene Blum, revealed here today. Contact with him, she said, had been maintained through his son, Robert, a prisoner in Germany, to whom he wrote letters and who relayed news of him up to September 30. He was permitted to write twice a month.
Blum said his health was excellent, but his family is worried because they have been unable recently to send their usual bi-monthly food packages. They have tried to send the packages through Switzerland, but the Swiss insist that they be furnished with his address, which obviously is not known. Despite his need for food, Blum used much of his package permit for books, requesting Cicera in Latin, Plate in Greek and John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle.”
In his letters, Mme. Blum revealed, the former Popular Front leader advocated a United States of Europe and a powerful League of Nations. He told of having written a book, “Echelle Humaine” (The Ladder of Humanity) while imprisoned at Ft. Bourassol, near the France-German border. The book, in which he outlines his ideas, will shortly be published here.
Former Interior Minister Georges Mandel was imprisoned with the Blums until last July, when the Nazis sent him to France where he was killed by the Vichy militia. Until 1943, they had been imprisoned at Ft. Bourassol together with former Premier Edouard Daladier, Gen. Maurice Gamelin and other former French leaders.
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