More than 300 Jews committed suicide this week in unoccupied France as a result of the round-up of thousands of Jewish families for deportation to Nazi-held eastern territory, a reliable report reaching here today from Vichy states.
The number of Jewish suicides is mounting in various parts of unoccupied France as the mass-arrests of Jews continue unabated, the report says. In a number of cities the entire Jewish population has been arrested. In Rouen, in occupied France, all Jewish males were expelled from the city while the women were given 14 days notice to leave the city voluntarily, the report reveals.
The Nazi authorities in Paris, according to the report, have somewhat reduced the boder guard on the demarcation line between occupied and unoccupied France and thousands of Jews are crossing into the unoccupied part of France in the hope that they will escape deportation to Poland. They soon find, however, that in the “free zone” Jews are likewise being rounded up for deportation.
NAZIS USE SOLDIERS TO ROUND-UP JEWS; VICHY REVOKES CITIZENSHIPS
The report discloses that in Paris the Nazi authorities were forced to use German soldiers to round-up the Jews after the French police and officials displayed reluctance in carrying out this distasteful task.
Estimating that 30,000 Jews have been arrested for deportation in Paris alone, the report, which is based on eye-witness descriptions by several Paris Jews who succeeded in reaching Vichy, confirms that many Jewish women threw their children from windows prior to jumping themselves when the German soldiers invaded their homes to arrest them.
“The despair of the Jews both in occupied and in unoccupied France can hardly be described,” the report says. “They know that their deportation amounts to virtual death. A deep feeling of resentment at the deportations prevails among many Frenchmen since it is now widely known in France from war prisoners who returned from Germany that persons sent to slave labor in the Reich are worked to death.”
In Vichy, the government of Marshal Petain today published a list containing the names of several hundred naturalized Jews whose citizenship has been revoked. These cancellations of citizenship are being carried out under pressure by Germany in order to make the disfranchised Jews eligible for deportation from unoccupied France to German-held territory.
In Paris, a bomb was thrown today from the gallery of a moving picture house where an anti-Jewish film was being shown. One person is reported to have been killed and twenty-seven injured. The Nazi authorities in Paris yesterday ordered the confiscation and sale of all residences in occupied France belonging to Jews who fled to the unoccupied zone.
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.
