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Arrests of Jews in Egypt Continue; Community Reported in Panic

October 18, 1954
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New reports of widespread persecution of Jews in Egypt have been received here during the week-end revealing that the Jewish community there is in a state of panic as a result of the mass arrests on charges described as “fantastic.”

The reports estimate that more than 150 Jews have recently been imprisoned, some of them for possessing books written in Hebrew. Interrogation methods used on the arrested victims “stagger the imagination,” the reports state.

Examples are cited of a Mr. Camona, a former official of the Cairo Railways arrested on August 7, who was “beaten to death,” and of Miss Victorine Nino, a 25-year-old Cairo Jewess arrested the same night who was “so badly tortured that she attempted to commit suicide by leaping from a top story window.” Responsibility for “this wave of terror,” says one report, rests with the newly-formed Egyptian National Militia” which is described as a “paramilitary organization trained by former German Army officers on the Storm Trooper model.”

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