Strings of railway cars piled high with confiscated Jewish furniture and other articles are leaving daily from Holland for Germany, according to a report published here today by the Netherlands Government-in-Exile. The trains carry placards reading: “Gifts from the Netherlands people to the poor Germans who were bombed out of house and home by the English.”
Information reaching London from the underground movement in Holland reveals that all Dutch railroad men, from conductors to high officials, are disregarding the Nazi laws governing Jewish travellers on the basis that their own regulations, which do not differentiate between Jews and non-Jews, must take precedence over the anti-Jewish rulings of the Nazi administration.
The Dutch Nazi weekly, De Storm, attacking the railroad personnel because of their “uncooperative” attitude, gives the following instances: When a Dutch Nazi boarded a train at Utrecht, he found a Jew seated in a third-class compartment, while all seats were occupied. He ordered the Jew to give up his place, but the latter refused. The train guard, when appealed to by the Nazi, “immediately got a fit of stupidity,” said the paper. He declared he knew of no regulation compelling Jews to give up their seats.
Another example cited by De Storm concerned a Jew who was seated in a second-class compartment of a train from The Hague to Utrecht. When a traveller complained to the conductor: “I believe Jews are not allowed to travel second-class,” he replied that he had no instructions to that effect. On arrival in Utrecht the traveller carried the matter to a high railway official who answered: “I am unaware of such an order. I do not know that Jews need travel permits, must give up their seats, or are obliged to travel third-class only. Under the rules of the Netherlands railways, a Jew is one of our clients and will be treated as such. What is decreed by the Reich’s Commissioner does not concern me. That’s the responsibility of the directors.”
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.
