Bericht der Jewish Telegraph Agency über die aus dem Burgenland ausgewiesenen Jüdinnen und Juden

51 BURGENLAND JEWS MARRONED ON BREAKWATER IN DANUBE: 35 REPATRIATED AND ARRESTED BY NAZI. 15 STILL HIDING IN WOOD ON FRONTIER.

Prague, Apr. 20th. (Jewish Telegraphic agency).

Fifty-one Jews from Burgenland were rescued on Sunday night from a breakwater in the Danube after the inhabitants of the Czech town of Theben had been attracted by their cries of distress. The breakwater was about 100 meters from the Czech side of the river. Czech frontier guards brought the marooned Jews to Theben.

The Jews, who are from the Austrian frontier towns of Kittsee and Kroatisch-Jarendorf, declared that they had been arrested by Nazi stormtroopers who had confiscated their property, put them in a motor-boat and left them marooned on the breakwater.

Among the Jews was the 82-year-old Rabbi of Kittsee, Perls, im Originaltext fälschlich: Parls his sick wife, and many women and small children.

The Theben innkeeper Sieber took pity on the Jews and put them up at his inn. They were later fetched by Czecho-Slovak police who took them to the police detention station in Bratislava. Only the wife of Rabbi Perls was permitted to stay in the Jewish hospital in Bratislava, the rest were taken across the Hungarian frontier.

The Czecho-Slovak authorities declare that they cannot allow any Jewish refugees from Austria to stay in the country, because, if they do, the Nazis would deport all the Burgenland Jews to Czecho-Slovakia.

The Hungarian authorities deported the 51 Jews to Austria on Tuesday. 35 of them crossed the border into Austria and were arrested by Nazi stormtroopers of Kittsee who imprisoned them in one of their barracks. The remaining 15 refugees were yesterday still in the Pheasants’ Wood along the border of Austria.

A Jewish delegation left Bratislava for Prague to ask the Czecho-Slovak Minister of the Interior, Dr. Czerny, to allow the Jewish refugees to stay in Czecho-Slovakia. Another delegation is to leave for London to lodge a formal protest with the British Government against such mass expulsions.