A document read today at the trial of Otto Abetz, Nazi Ambassador to the Vichy Government, established that the defendant, who is charged with complicity in the expulsion of 40,000 Jews from France to their death in Poland, was consulted by the Vichy regime on plans to deport Jews from this country to the Oswiecim death camp.
According to the document, the Nazi envoy agreed to the deportation of the Jews to Oswiecim, with the stipulation that alien Jews in France be deported first, “as a matter of propaganda.” After that, he said, the French should be deported. On the day that Abetz was informed that the Hungarian Government “was abandoning its Jews,” he notified the Vichy Government: “Now you can put them (the Jews) on the deportation list,” the prosecutor charged.
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