Hardly one hundred Jews remain in this city, which had a pre-war Jewish population of 80,000, a Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent was told today by a young Czech Jewish cameraman he encountered while the latter was photographing the debris left by the last-minute battle between Czech patriots and the Germans.
When the correspondent asked the photographer, whose name is Franticek German, whether there were any Jews left in this capital, he looked startled and then, smilingly, said: "Shalom, Shalom." He had been hiding the fact that he was a Jew all during the German occupation, and this was the first time he had admitted it openly.
The 100 survivors, who Herman estimates remain here, are mostly aged or ill persons and those who went into hiding. One of them, Arthur Mostri, who said he was a relative by marriage of Jack London, disclosed that a few months ago the Nazis rounded up the few Jews who had been allowed to remain in the city because they were married to non-Jews. All synagogues, he said, were destroyed except for the oldest one in trague which had been spared as an historical monument. But, that, too, may have been fit during the last-ditch battle which centered in the old city.
During a visit to Theresienstadt, yesterday, the correspondent found among the survivors, Chief Rabbi Leo Baeck of Berlin, who was deported from Germany in 1943. Dr. Baeck is safe and well. Conditions in the camp, however, are still bad. Typhus, brought in by deportees sent to Theresienstadt in recent weeks from Dachau and Buchenwald, has spread and there are as many as 100 new cases daily.
The Prague radic announced today that the ghetto in Theresienstadt-through which, the broadcast said, 90,000 Jews passed since its formation – is being liquidated with the assistance of the medical branch of the health section of the Czechoslovak National Council. A relief compaign is in full swing, and medical supplies, doctors, nurses and clothing are being sent into the camp. However, much still remains to be done in the ghetto area, the broadcast added. It stressed that residents in the ghetto area cannot be taken from the ghetto by relatives without authorization as there is danger that typhus will be spread to areas outside the camp.
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.
