refuse.’ 55
***
Throughout August, information had reached Jewish representatives in Geneva, telling of the deportations from Western Europe. It was certain that tens of thousands of Jews were being seized, interned and deported to the East, but where in the East was not known. Nor was the precise fate of the deportees, but when Richard Lichtheim learned that it was not only the able-bodied who were being deported, but women, children, the old and the sick, he wrote in a letter to London, New York and Jerusalem on September 3: ‘theintention cannot be to get labour supply but simply to kill off the deportees.’ Lichtheim added: ‘All the relief organizations in Europe, Jewish and non-Jewish, constantly dealing with these horrors are in a state of despair, because no force on earth can stop them. Announcements lately made that the perpetrators would be punished after the war have of course no effect. Also there is no adequate punishment for those crimes.’ 56
On September 3 the World Jewish Congress in Geneva learned of eleven deportations in August from the main internment camps in southern France and the Pyrenees, including Gurs and Les Milles. Five days later, in a letter to Jerusalem, Lichtheim reported that ‘at least ten thousand have already been deported, despite a strong protest by two leading clergymen in southern France, the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Montauban.’ 57
Throughout the first two weeks of September,
The Times
in London published full reports of the deportation of Jews from France. It had received these reports from its own correspondent at the frontier between Vichy France and neutral Spain. Each report was published in London on the day after it was received in Spain.
On September 7 the main article on the imperial and foreign page of
The Times
was headed: ‘Vichy’s Jewish victims, children deported to Germany’. The article told of the unabated ruthlessness of the deportation campaign. Women and children, it stated, ‘suddenly notified’ that they could visit their relatives in various internment camps, were then ‘forced to accompany the deportees without being given any opportunity to make preparations’. At Les Milles there had been eighty-six attempted suicides: ‘some men had cut their veins with broken glass.’ Recently ‘a train containing four thousand Jewish children, unaccompanied, without identification papers or even distinguishing marks, left Lyons for Germany.’ But where in Germany was not known. 58
In the House of Commons on September 8, Winston Churchill referred to the deportations from France during the course of a comprehensive survey of the war situation. The ‘brutal persecutions’ in which the Germans had indulged, he said, ‘in every land into which their armies have broken’, had recently been augmented by ‘the most bestial, the most squalid and the most senseless of all their offences, namely the mass deportation of Jews from France, with the pitiful horrors attendant upon the calculatedand final scattering of families’. Churchill added: ‘This tragedy fills me with astonishment as well as with indignation, and it illustrates as nothing else can the utter degradation of the Nazi nature and theme, and the degradation of all who lend themselves to its unnatural and perverted passions.’
Pausing for a moment, Churchill declared: ‘When the hour of liberation strikes Europe, as strike it will, it will also be the hour of retribution.’ 59
In the days following Churchill’s speech,
The Times
continued to report the deportation of Jews from France, and to stress the opposition of the French people to the collaboration of the Vichy government in these measures. On September 9, it published news of the dismissal by the Vichy authorities of General de St-Vincent, the military Governor of Lyons, who had ‘refused to obey Vichy’s order’ on August 28 ‘to cooperate in the mass arrests of Jews in the unoccupied zone’. General de
***
Throughout August, information had reached Jewish representatives in Geneva, telling of the deportations from Western Europe. It was certain that tens of thousands of Jews were being seized, interned and deported to the East, but where in the East was not known. Nor was the precise fate of the deportees, but when Richard Lichtheim learned that it was not only the able-bodied who were being deported, but women, children, the old and the sick, he wrote in a letter to London, New York and Jerusalem on September 3: ‘theintention cannot be to get labour supply but simply to kill off the deportees.’ Lichtheim added: ‘All the relief organizations in Europe, Jewish and non-Jewish, constantly dealing with these horrors are in a state of despair, because no force on earth can stop them. Announcements lately made that the perpetrators would be punished after the war have of course no effect. Also there is no adequate punishment for those crimes.’ 56
On September 3 the World Jewish Congress in Geneva learned of eleven deportations in August from the main internment camps in southern France and the Pyrenees, including Gurs and Les Milles. Five days later, in a letter to Jerusalem, Lichtheim reported that ‘at least ten thousand have already been deported, despite a strong protest by two leading clergymen in southern France, the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishop of Montauban.’ 57
Throughout the first two weeks of September,
The Times
in London published full reports of the deportation of Jews from France. It had received these reports from its own correspondent at the frontier between Vichy France and neutral Spain. Each report was published in London on the day after it was received in Spain.
On September 7 the main article on the imperial and foreign page of
The Times
was headed: ‘Vichy’s Jewish victims, children deported to Germany’. The article told of the unabated ruthlessness of the deportation campaign. Women and children, it stated, ‘suddenly notified’ that they could visit their relatives in various internment camps, were then ‘forced to accompany the deportees without being given any opportunity to make preparations’. At Les Milles there had been eighty-six attempted suicides: ‘some men had cut their veins with broken glass.’ Recently ‘a train containing four thousand Jewish children, unaccompanied, without identification papers or even distinguishing marks, left Lyons for Germany.’ But where in Germany was not known. 58
In the House of Commons on September 8, Winston Churchill referred to the deportations from France during the course of a comprehensive survey of the war situation. The ‘brutal persecutions’ in which the Germans had indulged, he said, ‘in every land into which their armies have broken’, had recently been augmented by ‘the most bestial, the most squalid and the most senseless of all their offences, namely the mass deportation of Jews from France, with the pitiful horrors attendant upon the calculatedand final scattering of families’. Churchill added: ‘This tragedy fills me with astonishment as well as with indignation, and it illustrates as nothing else can the utter degradation of the Nazi nature and theme, and the degradation of all who lend themselves to its unnatural and perverted passions.’
Pausing for a moment, Churchill declared: ‘When the hour of liberation strikes Europe, as strike it will, it will also be the hour of retribution.’ 59
In the days following Churchill’s speech,
The Times
continued to report the deportation of Jews from France, and to stress the opposition of the French people to the collaboration of the Vichy government in these measures. On September 9, it published news of the dismissal by the Vichy authorities of General de St-Vincent, the military Governor of Lyons, who had ‘refused to obey Vichy’s order’ on August 28 ‘to cooperate in the mass arrests of Jews in the unoccupied zone’. General de
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