Mass Exodus from Protectorate Seen As Official Emigration Bureau is Set Up

A Jewish exodus from the “protectorate” of Bohemia-Moravia is expected shortly as a result of the opening next Monday of an official emigration bureau in Prague under the direction of the Gestapo. Establishment of the bureau indicates a complete change in the Gestapo’s emigration policy in the “protectorate,” where hitherto 10,000 persons had unsuccessfully applied for emigration permits.

Simultaneously with opening of the Gestapo office a Jewish emigration bureau will be started to cooperate with the former. Given official recognition, the Jewish office will include a special department of the Palestine Emigration Office and the Prague Jewish Community’s emigration bureau. The Jewish emigration bureau will be entrusted with tasks similar to those of the newly organized Reichsvereinigung in Berlin, namely: (1) Organizing Jewish emigration from the “protectorate” involving negotiations with foreign governments; (2) taking over private Jewish schools and establishing a Jewish community school system in view of the fact that Jews are no longer admitted to German and Czech schools; (3) supervise welfare work for all needy Jews throughout the “protectorate.”

A branch of the Jewish emigration office will be established at Bruenn for Moravian Jews. The emigration office will work along the lines of that established in Vienna. The Gestapo has ordered Dr. Franz Weidmann to go to Vienna to study organization of the office there.

Meanwhile, a general meeting of the Zionist district committee heard a report by the Palestine Office stating that 1,100 Jews would emigrate to Palestine within the next few weeks. The Jewish community at Nachod has been forced to turn over its synagogue to the municipality, which will transform it into a municipal funeral parlor. A Pilsen barbers’ organization has decided to reserve special chairs and instruments in barber shops for Jewish customers.

Reports from Prague said that Jews in the city of Olmuetz had been forcibly removed from a public bath and paraded through the streets in their bathing suits by German and Czech anti-Semites. Many Jews throughout the “protectorate” have been arrested for visiting public parks and bathing resorts. A bomb exploded prematurely near the prayer house of the Jewish Cemetery at Kromeritz, killing the thrower.

It was reliably learned here that the German Office for Racial Policy, which is attached to the Reichs Interior Ministry, is recommending emigration of Christian half-Jews as well as other “non-Aryans.”

At the same time, Julius Streicher’s weekly Der Stuermer is demanding a solution of the “mongrel problem” similar to that of the Jewish problem, declaring that “half-Jews” constitute the “Jewish reserve” in Germany.