The Netherlands Government-in-Exile today charged the Nazi authorities with using poison gas to kill Jews deported from occupied Holland.
The charge was made on the basis of reports reaching here from the underground movement in Amsterdam. Underground newspapers state that the Jewish “deportees,” who are usually reported sent “to unknown destinations,” actually are gassed by the Nazis.
One of the clandestine Dutch publications carries the details of the recent “evacuation” of the Jewish asylum at Apeldoorn. It reveals that the premises of the asylum have been taken over by the Ministry of Education which was moved from The Hague. The patients were supposed to be deported to Germany, but most of them, the underground paper says, died from suffocation in the crowded cattle cars in which they had been packed before they reached the border.
Other underground newspapers report the death in Amsterdam of Chief Rabbi J. Vredenburg who was 76 years old. They state that the Dutch press carried an insignificant obituary, and failed to mention that the rabbi was an officer in the Order of Orange-Nasseu. Also that he was one of the moving spirits in the evacuation of underfed German, Austrian and Belgian children to Holland during the first World War.
Evidence of pressure upon baptized Jews is revealed in one of the issues of Storm, the Dutch Nazi Storm Troop organ, reaching the Netherland Information Office here. The paper demands that baptized Jews be segregated in special churches “to prevent their contact with Aryans.”
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