The opening gun in the Nazi press campaign to win the Saar plebiscite was fired today with a blast in the Voelkischer Beobachter, Hitler’s own paper, in which practically everyone who had anything to do with the Saar problem was termed “an agent of Jewish atrocity propaganda.”
Included in the Beobachter list of Jewish agents” are: the members of the League of Nations Saar Commission; Dorothy Thompson, American writer recently expelled from Germany by the Nazis, and author of a series of articles on the Saar; Lord Marley, Labor peer and active in anti-Nazi activities; Hjalmar Branting, Swedish statesman active in League Affairs and Count Michael Karolye, former premier of Hungary, now in exile.
On January 16, the Saar population will vote whether to return to Germany, to be annexed to France, or continue under the rule of the League Saar Commission. Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler and all Nazi orators have declared over and again that Nazi Germany will never relinquish the Saar.
The League is now being asked by various interested groups to secure guarantees that no matter what the result of the plebiscite, the Jewish minority and the political opponents of the Nazis will not be persecuted. France has agreed to furnish such guarantees, but the Nazi government refused.
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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.
