ZURICH (Apr. 25)
Hitler’s project eventually to “evacuate” all the Jews from Europe to the French island colony of Madagascar is gaining more and more ground among governments in Nazi-dominated countries, according to reports reaching here today from Budapest and Vichy.
The report from Budapest states that the Jews of Hungary are much perturbed over the address which the new Hungarian Premier, Ladislas Bardossy, delivered yesterday in the Hungarian Parliament. Their anxiety is due not only to the fact that Premier announced that the third anti-Jewish law would soon be introduced to eliminate the Jews from the economic life of the country, but also because he hinted in his address the possibility of joining in support of the Madagascar plan.
“The Jewish question in Hungary, he said, will be settled as part of its settlement in all of Europe.”
Similar hints are contained in French newspapers. Le Temps, in an editorial on the Jewish problem in unoccupied France, speaks of a forthcoming “permanent” solution which would not spell actual persecution. The implication seems to be that the Madagascar plan is being considered also by the Vichy Government, under Nezi pressure.
It is known here that the Franco-German Armistice contains a secret provision under which the French Government is to accept in Madagascar all the Jews from Europe. In order to enforce this provision, some 12,000 Jews from Baden and the Palatinate were deported to France soon after the Armistice. As the British blockade prevents French ships from carrying passengers, the expelled German Jews were stranded in unoccupied France and were interned in camps when the Nazi authorities refused to readmit them into Germany.