Nazi Prisoners Still Mistreated, Refugees Report at Prague

A fresh flood of Jewish refugees has just entered Czechoslovakia this week as a result of the renewed anti-Semitic terror in Germany. Many of them are Jews who have been detained in concentration camps and, by various means have succeeded in securing their release and escaping across the frontier.

It is stated by some of these refugees that prisoners in the concentration camps, particularly in that of Dachau, where Bavarians and South German political suspects and Jews are detained, are still subjected to the most harsh and cruel treatment. A young Jewish merchant from Bayreuth, aged 28, who was detained at the Dachau concentration camp for six weeks, left it with his hair turned completely grey, and bearing obvious signs of having been tortured on his face and body. His release at that date was due only to the intervention of the Czechoslovakian government, which was induced to take action by the father-in-law of the young man, a well-known doctor of Prague. Even after his release from the concentration camp however, the German authorities refused to permit him to leave the country, until he had paid fifty-thousand marks of debts. Although the young man was able to prove that the amount due to him from German firms was five-fold the amount which he owed, the authorities persisted in their refusal to allow him to leave the country until all his debts had been paid in full. On the other hand, his debtors refused to pay him any money, one of them writing a letter to the effect that if the Dachau concentration camp could not teach him a lesson it might be better if he were removed altogether.