A dark picture of the plight of Jews in the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate was drawn today by Alvin Steinkopf, Associated Press correspondent, in a dispatch from Prague.
“Bad and gradually getting worse,” was the way a Bohemian Jew described the present situation of the Jews to the correspondent. The correspondent said, however, that in two respects the position of the Jews was somewhat better than that of Jews who were hit by anti-Semitic movements in other lands.
“First, there has been no violence, the only persons hurt in Prague’s single anti Jewish demonstrations being Aryans,” he said. “And second, restrictive measures have been applied gradually. Jews are being squeezed out of business.”
Steinkopf said there were still more than 200,000 Jews in Bohemia and Moravia, more than 40,000 in Prague itself.
There is little prospect that any great number will be able to get away soon, he declared, adding that for Czech Jews borders were getting tighter each week. A small number are getting away to Shanghai, about the only place still willing or able to absorb some of the luckless Jews of the former Czechoslovakia, the correspondent wrote.
About the only foreign financial support reaching the Jewish community at Prague comes from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Steinkopf said.
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