A tragic episode of the war was disclosed in a Lisbon dispatch to the Daily Express today.
The dispatch quoted the Jewish Lieut. Leonard Rodriguez of the Dutch Army, who just reached Lisbon after escaping from Holland, as reporting that 30,000 Jews massed on the docks of the Dutch port of Ijmuiden when Dutch resistance collapsed and German forces descended on the city. Many of the Jews hoped to escape aboard a Dutch liner then in the port, but British forces sank the ship in order to block the harbor entrance.
A friend of the lieutenant, who was on the docks when the ship was sunk, said the action caused frightful despair among the Jews, many of whom were-Germans. Many opened their veins with razor blades or pocket knives and others jumped off the pier and drowned themselves rather than face capture by the Nazi armed units which were advancing through the city.
Lieut. Rodriguez said, however, that up to the time he escaped from Holland the Germans had more or less ignored the Jews. Some refugees could not stand the strain of waiting and reported to Gestapo headquarters immediately. The Germans assertedly told these refugees they were not interested in them.
The Lieutenant said that Jewish newspapermen were dismissed by telephone after the German entry. “The newspaper Handelslad gave these discharged Jews two months’ pay but I do not know what the other newspapers did,” he said.
Word was received here today that Numa Torczyner, president of the Belgian Zionist Federation, and David Siva, president of the Palestine Foundation Fund in Belgium, have arrived in France.
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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.
