From 35,000 to 50,000 Jews were estimated to have been arrested in the past 72 hours. Police vans continued to roll through the streets of cities throughout Germany, bringing new batches of prisoners to local jails or concentration camps.
Among those arrested is virtually every Jewish doctor barred from practice by recent Nazi decrees, as well as practically all practising Jewish attorneys. Arrests among hospital medical staffs left hundreds of Jewish patients virtually uncared for.
A partial survey in Berlin reveals the following Jewish leaders among those arrested:
Dr. Otto Hirsch, president of the executive committee of the Reichsverband and der Juden in Deutschland, central representative organization of Jews in Germany;
Dr. Lilienthal, also an official of the Reichsverband;
Dr. Salo Landau, of the Berlin Jewish Community board;
Prof. Landsberger, director of the Jewish Museum;
Alfred Hirschberg, Dr. Hand Reichmann and Dr. Goldschmidt, all of the Centralverein der Juden in Deutschland, welfare and emigration organization;
Dr. Deinemann and Dr. Rosenthal, directors of the Union of Jewish War Veterans;
Bruno Vyda, head of Berlin’s Reform Jewish Community;
Dr. Marcus, director of Paltreu, Berlin office of Haavara, organization that operated the Germany-Palestine transfer agreement.
The bulk of the adult Jews have been arrested in the following cities, according to reliable reports: Vienna, Frankfurt-am-Main, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, Mannheim, Hanover, Stuttgart, Dresden, Dortmund and Karlsruhe.
Meanwhile, the Jews have been deprived even of the solace of religion, since their synagogues have been destroyed and they feared to attract attention by resorting to the usual practice, in the absence of temples, of gathering in “minyans” (groups numbering not less than ten) for services in private homes.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.