DENNEN REPORTS ON -
DENNEN REPORTS On — The Plight of the Jewish Refugees From the Balkans LEON DENNEN, contributing editor of The New . Leader, has just returned to New York from Turkey snd the Middle East where he...
...I have seen an authentic document, the author of which is a former prominent Nazi agent in Turkey now interned by the British, indicating that the Gestapo had given the Turkish police a list of pro-Allied Germans whom they wanted to have deported to Germany...
...The present crisis in Greece is due not only to a complicated political situation arising from Anglo Russian rivalry in the Halkans and Middle Ka>4, but also to the famine which has ravaged the Greeks ever since the Nazi occupation...
...After the capitulation of France the Vichy Government rewarded them by placing them all in a concentration camp where they were worked to death or kept on a starvation diet...
...I investigated the charges and found them to be true...
...If they are not satisfied quickly, the result may be a new totalitarianism and the end of political democracy as we know it...
...About 85,000 women, children and older ¦en have been placed in concentration camps outside Budapest where they 1 ive in the midst of hunger and , Pestilence...
...About 200,000 Rumanian Jews are totally destitute lacking the barest means for existence...
...It is not enough to liberate the people of Europe...
...In Casablanca, where I have just been, I met hun-'k'ds of Jewish refugees who rendered noble service in the liberation of France anil who now are treated as second-class citizens at (be hands of the local French authorities...
...For seven Months he worked in close contact with the resistance and anti-Nazi underground movements in the Balkans...
...The French local officials of North Africa have pursued the old anti-Semitic policies...
...Equally critical is the situation of the Jews in Rumania where about 300,000 still survive...
...Following my appeal to the Allied authorities and after the Turkish Government in Ankara was made aware of this crime the deportation stopped...
...Our American Ambassador Laurence Stein-aart is to be commended for his efforts on behalf of persecuted minorities...
...DENNEN REPORTS On — The Plight of the Jewish Refugees From the Balkans LEON DENNEN, contributing editor of The New . Leader, has just returned to New York from Turkey snd the Middle East where he spent nine months on a mission for the International Rescue and Irfjef Committee...
...Many of them served as volunteers in the French Army and Foreign Legion and fought together with the Allies in North Africa...
...The Turkish Government was unaware of the situation and the deportation were an illegal act perpetrated by a number of Nazi-minded chiefs of police in Istanbul who worked hand-in-hand with the Gestapo...
...Most of them arc property!?**, and destitute...
...The Turkish Government did good work in facilitating the passage of Jewish refugees from the Ralkans to Palestine...
...their acute human needs must also be met...
...These refugees charged that on the request of the Gestapo persons who opposed the Nazi regime and rendered service to the Allies were being deported by force to Germany where they faced certain death...
...Leon Dennen's activities resulted in the saving of scores of lives of anti-fascists who were en the death lists of Himmler's Gestapo...
...The present administration of French North Africa is not much of an improvement over Vichy...
...He will contribute a series of articles to The New leader expanding these and other observations "Tht Balkans and eastern Europe face a winter of famine and pestilence unless governments stop haggling tver the political control of food distribution and permit VNNRA and private agencies to carry on i>l«f eperations at once...
...Subsequently I heard that the train was attacked by Yugoslav detachments snd all political prisoners freed...
...Before I had a chance to intervene several were deported...
...The International Rescue and Relief Oerosiittee is an American organization to aid the political victims of Fascism and Nazism...
...Thousands of Bessarabian and Bukowina Jews who have been repatriated from Transnistria and are regarded by the Soviet authorities as Russian citizens are now being deported to Siberia...
...Jews who have recently applied for repatriation have been informed by the local authorities that as naturalized citizens of France, regardless of their contribution to the liberation of the country, they cannot lie repatriated now since there is a shortage of shipping space and persons who were born in France receive priority...
...Th* following is a summary of the report he gave in an interview on Dec...
...She went into hiding but was csught by the Istanbul police and placed on a train bound for Bulgaria on August 14...
...The situation of the Jews in Hungary has become even more critical...
...Hundreds of Jews aire being shot n> the streets of Budapest by gangs of Hungarian and German Nazis...
...There arc about :t.(Kl(l Jews in Casablanca today who escaped from France and are now anxious to return to their homes...
...But unfortunately all efforts were feeble in the face •f the great need...
...A person born in France but who haaMonlrih-uted nothing to our war effort—and nianvMf those people in North Vfrira were outright rollalmation-ists—is preferred to a Jewish naturalized cisf/en of France who has gum a leg or an arm for the liberation of France and is now the possesser of the Croix de Guerre...
...Sheba Strunsky is the Executive Secretary...
...The President of the organization is Frank Kingdom...
...In Bulgaria there are still about 30,000 Jews...
...In the month of August, following the break in Turkish-German relations, the representative of the International Rescue and Relief Committee was approached by a group of Austrian, Czech and German anti-Nazis in Turkey who were threatened with deportation to Germany...
...Despite the repeated promises of the Bulgarian Government and despite the presence of the Russians in the country Jewish property has not as yet been restored...
...The action of several American correspondents who cabled th* story thus bringing It to the attention of the Turkish Prime Minister, helped in a large measure to clear up the situation but, unfortunately, not soon enough to save Marie Thaens, a German sculptress of pronounced anti-Nazi views who was particularly wanted by the Gestapo...
...The plight of the remnants of the Jewish people, far from improving, has steadily grown more tragic...
...During the nine months I was there only about 4,000 Jews passed through Turkey, most of them to Palestine...
Vol. 27 • December 1944 • No. 51
