Saar Jewry today awaited with trepidation the outcome of the plebiscite which is to take place on Sunday to decide whether the Saar territory will be returned to Germany.
The Voelkischer Beobachter, Hitler’s newspaper, which reached Saarbruecken today, carries a definite threat to the Jews of Saarbruecken. The paper announces gleefully that after the plebiscite the Jews will be entirely “liquidated” in the Saar region. This “Saarbruecken Ghetto,” even if it does not consist exclusively of racial Jews, will vanish on January 13, the paper states.
The Voelkischer Beobachter, in the same issue, carries an article from its Saarbruecken correspondent declaring that all the Jews are packed and ready to move immediately after the plebiscite.
An appeal to the world to intervene on behalf of the 5,000 Jews of the Saar, who are definitely going to be eliminated if the Saar is turned over to Germany next Sunday, was issued today by Dr. Ruelf, Chief of Saarbruecken, through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
MISFORTUNE TO JEWRY
“Should the plebiscite turn over the Saar region to Nazi Germany, then a dreadful misfortune will be faced not only by the Jews of the Saar but by Jewry as a whole,” the appeal says. “Certain considerations which the Nazi government maintains for the Jews in Germany will not be maintained for the Jews in the Saar. The position of the Jews in the Saar becomes even worse when we consider that the majority of them are not in a position to emigrate; that they cannot sell their immovables because no German today is willing to buy anything from a Jew in the Saar, even at low prices, because he figures that the Jew later will be compelled to give up his property in the Saar, and
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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.