New Expulsion Threat Hangs over 5,000-10,000 Reich Jews; Leaders Map Appeal to Nations

Jewish leaders are considering an emergency appeal to foreign nations and to the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee to open immediate avenues of escape for 5,000 to 10,000 German and stateless Jews now under threat of expulsion. Nazi pressure against these thousands is growing daily and it is feared that mass expulsions similar to the deportation of more than 12,000 Polish Jews in October will occur unless steps are taken to ensure legal emigration.

The chief victims are several thousand Jews recently released from concentration camps after signing a pledge to emigrate. In some cases the authorities demanded a pledge giving no time limit, but others contained time limits ranging from a fortnight to several months. Prisoners in some towns, including Bochum, were forced to sign identical pledges to leave with in three weeks.

Emigration is the only hope for saving an estimated 20,000 Jews still held in the three larger concentration camps. Unless they are released soon, Winter hardships will wreck them physically to the point where they will no longer be acceptable immigrants for foreign countries. Meanwhile, the Nazis are extending their deportation activities against stateless Jews among those who have completed their vocational retraining courses.

GHETTO CINEMAS PLANNED

Ghetto cinemas for Jews may shortly be opened in Berlin and other centers under the auspices of the Jewish Culture League, Nazi-sponsored organization which is now in process of reorganization to effect complete regimentation of Jewish cultural life in Germany. The League has become sponsor of all Jewish cultural activities, including 1) the theater and music, 2) publication and distribution of all literature including books, magazines and newspapers, and 3) adult education, which is to be limited henceforth to foreign languages and other emigration requirements.

The ghetto cinemas, seen by the Nazis as the only means of making the League self-supporting, will be permitted to show a limited number of foreign films and selected German pictures. Simultaneously, the Nazis are dissolving three or four large Jewish publishing houses which have been permitted to continue and have closed down all Jewish cultural societies, including the world-famed Jewish Society of Literature and Science.

It has not yet been determined which Jewish literary and scientific publications will be permitted to continue. It has, however, been fairly established that courses in Jewish history and religion will be abolished by the adult education classes. In all likelihood, the League will have only one newspaper, the Jewish News Page, the only Jewish paper — comprising a single sheet — which has been permitted to publish since the November pogroms.

It was revealed today that the privately-owned Israelitische Familienblatt, oldest Jewish weekly in Germany which was published in Hamburg and Berlin, has been liquidated by the owners. There is reason to believe that the C. -V. Zeitung, organ of the Centralverein der Juden in Deutschland, and the Juedische Rundschau, organ of the German Zionist Federation, will not re-appear. The three periodicals together had a circulation of about 120,000.