German authorities in France have arrested Jacques Heilbronner, president of the Jewish Consistory, a report reaching here today states. The arrest took place in Lyons. All efforts to obtain his release were unsuccessful. His present whereabouts are unknown.
The report says that Jews are now being arrested en masse in Nice and its suburbs, and immediately deported to an unknown destination. To facilitate rounding up all the Jews in Nice, the Gestapo is using stationery of the Jewish Community to “invite” Jews to come to the offices of the community “where an important communication awaits them.” The unsuspecting Jews are arrested as soon as they appear and are deported without even being allowed to get in touch with their family.
Parallel with the mass-arrests of Jews, the Gestapo is conducting largescale deportations of Jewish children. All children in the Jewish Children’s Home at La Vardiere, near Marseille, were deported together with their teachers on October 21. Sixty Jews and their families were held by the German authorities as hostages prior to the deportation in order to make certain that not a single child escaped.
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