Swiss citizens returning from France to Switzerland today stated that the Swiss Consulates in Vichy and in Paris declared that they are no longer able to protect Swiss Jews residing in France, since the German authorities there have announced that they consider them “Jews” rather than Swiss nationals.
The Swiss newspaper Le People today reports that huge raids on Jews have recently been carried out by the Gestapo with the aid of French police in Nice, on the French Riviera. People arrested on the streets were brought into the local synagogue where their identification documents were examined by Gestapo officials. Since a large number of Frenchmen are now using false documents, the Gestapo officials were not satisfied with the fact that the documents of many of the arrested persons bore “Aryan” names and forced them to remove their clothes. Only those who were not circumcised were released.
A similar round-up took place in Marseilles where even “Aryans” were detained aboard a ship in the harbor for more than forty-eight hours. The Jews are rested throughout France are all being transferred to the Drancy concentration camp which is described by German witnesses as “even worse than Dachau.”
The Swiss newspaper also reports that one of the largest raids on Jews took place recently in Paris when all exits to the subway stations were closed and all persons of Jewish appearance, including aged men and women, were taken to police headquarters. In a raid on a train running from Marseille to Lyons, the Chief Rabbi of Lyons was arrested, taken off the train and deported. His fate remains unknown.
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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.
