Four thousand Jews between 65 and 85 years of age were deported from Germany and Nazi-held countries in Western Europe last month and reached the fortress prison of Therezin in Czechoslovakia on August 15, according to information received by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile here today.
The 4,000 aged Jews were placed in barracks built in Therezin by younger Jews who had been brought from the Czech Protectorate to the fortress city during the past eight months. The report received by the Czechoslovak Government here estimates that approximately 60,000 Czechoslovakian Jews have passed through the fortress of Therezin en route to Nazi-occupied Poland where they are put to forced labor building roads without being properly fed and with no medical care.
While the men and women under fifty years of age are being transported from Therezin to deserted villages in Poland for road building, the elderly Jews remain in Therezin on a starvation diet and under the most unsanitary conditions. Those unfortunates who fall sick, as well as those accused of breaking the rules, are “transferred” to the dungeons of the ancient castle which are fifteen feet under the ground, where they disappear forever, the report states.
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.
