A sweeping anti-Jewish drive was under way today in Germany’s newly occupied territories of former Czecho-Slovakia, as Chancellor Adolf Hitler added Slovakia to his previously-acquired “protectorates” of Bohemia and Moravia.
Appointment of Nazi commissars for Jewish shops, a wave of suicides and arrests and extension of Germany’s Nuremberg Laws to the new “protectorate” marked the campaign against the Jewish population of the former Republic, estimated between two and three hundred thousand. A radio broadcast in Prague announced that special commissars had been placed in charge of Jewish shops in the city — as was done in Vienna a year ago after Austro-German Anschluss–carrying with it the implication that the shops might be taken from Jewish control.
An undetermined number of suicides of Jews and anti-Nazis was reported from Prague as the Gestapo opened a drive to round-up elements hostile to the new regime. A Gestapo officer arriving in Prague indicated that at least 10,000 arrests would be made before German occupation was completed.
Jewish relief work in Prague was halted by seizure of the Jewish community’s funds, reports asserted. The Prague office of the HIAS-ICA Emigration Association was said to have been among the other Jewish organizations and institutions closed down. Panic-stricken Jews were in hiding or making frantic efforts to emigrate.
A group of 300 Jews en route to England via Gdynia, Poland, and Scandinavia were cut off from the Polish-Bohemian frontier by the German occupation, reports said. They have credentials to emigrate, but will require Nazi permission. Hundreds of persons gathered outside the British Consulate in Prague, shouting, “we want to get away!”
Extension of the Nuremberg Laws was indicated in Chancellor Hitler’s decree this morning formally announcing incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia as a “protectorate” in the German Reich. The decree, broadcast by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, said that “German-blooded residents of the protectorate will become German citizens subject to the laws protecting German blood and German honor.”
A few hours later the Fuehrer announced that at the request of Slovak Premier Josef Tis## “I…..hereby assume protection of the Slovak State,” and it was expected that the anti-Semitic laws would be applied in Slovakia as well. Hitler’s decree did not preclude occupation of further territory because it referred to territory “occupied by German troops in March, 1939,” mentioning no territories by name.
As hundreds seeking to emigrate besieged the British consulate in Prague, Prime Min to assure the security of refugees from former Czecho-Slovakia, but pointed out that there was no way for them to get out or for outside aid to reach them.
The problem of refugees from the partitioned Republic was also reported to have been discussed by Myron C. Taylor, America vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Refugee Committee, with officials of the committee.
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.
