All 90,000 Jews in the Czech Protectorate will be rounded up and confined in a prison fortress in Bohemia, to remain there, isolated from the rest of the world, under an order issued by Reinhold Heydrich, the Nazi-protector” who was formerly the chief of the Gestapo in Berlin under Himmler.
The order, according to information received here today in Czechoslovak Government circles, has not been published in the Protectorate, nor was it announced over the Prague radio. The Nazi authorities evidently fear pro-Jewish manifestations by the Czech population and prefer to present them with an accomplished fact, when all the Jews are already inside the fortress.
The prison fortress where the Jews will be held is located in Terezin, northeastern Bohemia. Damp underground casements and rotten barracks in the small area between the fortress walls are horrible witnesses of dark days in the early 19th century when leading liberals of all non-German nationalities in the Austrian Empire were sent there to be imprisoned and tortured. One prisoner at Terezin was Gavrilo Princip, whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand precipitated World War I.
In issuing the order to have all the Jews herded into the Terezin fortress, Nazi “protector” Heydrich explained that he had taken this step “in order to put an end to whispering propaganda conducted by Jews.”
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