Only 90,000 Jews Remain in France of Pre-war Population of 350,000; 10,000 in Paris

Only 90,000 Jews remain in France of the 350,000 French and refugee Jews who lived there before the German occupation of the country, it is reported today by American correspondents in the French capital. In Paris, itself, there are only 10,000 Jews. Before the war the city had a Jewish population of about 100,000.

The correspondents also disclose that the Jews in Paris and in the Drancy concentration camp near the city helped to liberate themselves from the Germans. On August 7, more than two weeks before the Allies entered the city, barricades were erected in the Jewish quarters of the capital. Alexander Uhl of PM reports, while on that same day members of the French Forces of the Interior, in cooperation with some of the internees at Drancy, thwarted German attempts to deport 1,500 persons confined there by blowing up the cattle cars in which they were to be transported.

Uhl writes that “Jews have returned to their homes and are back in the life of Paris again. Their own resistance work, which even now cannot be talked about too freely for the sake of those still in Nazi power, is going on. As part of their duties in the FFI, they have been assigned the job of guarding Jewish buildings. And, as part of the FFI, they are again entering the French Army.” He also reports that “the decrees against the Jews have not yet been rescinded by the de Gauile government as they have been in North Africa, but no one pays the slightest attention to them any more.”

A New York Times correspondent reporting a visit to the ghetto established in Paris by the Germans says that “the aggregate of the stories these unfortunates told would fill a book..Some of them are too terrible for belief”