U.S. is Asked to Use Pressure on Axis Satellite Governments to Help Jews

Diplomatic pressure by the United States on the governments of Bulgaria, Rumania and other Axis-satellite nations to help the remaining Jews of Europe to escape from Hitler was proposed today to the new War Refugee Board by the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe.

The proposal was part of a plan advanced by the Emergency Committee to rescue as many as possible of the remaining Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Axis-satellite countries should be advised that forced deportation of Jews from their countries is tantamount to murdering them and will be definitely considered as murder, the memorandum proposed. A systematic campaign should be devised, it said, to warn both the satellite nations and Germany itself through leaflets dropped during bombing raids and short-wave radio.

Establishment of a special department in the International Red Cross was also proposed to “take charge and represent the Jews inside Nazi-held Europe.” Jewish war prisoners from Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia and other countries are isolated from non-Jewish prisoners and cruelly treated, the memorandum declared.

Provision should be made by the War Refugee Hoard, it suggested, for the issuance of “temporary passports” to all Jews reaching neutral countries on their arrival at the border. These passports would be similar to the emergency Nansan passports issued after the last World War. “The steady transportation of the Jewish evacuees into neighboring neutral and United Nations territories, such as Portugal, Palestine, North Africa and Cyprus, so that the rescue centers would always be ready to accept more arrivals from inside Europe” is essential, the memorandum stated. Palestine, it concluded “might well be given particular attention.”