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Foreign Minister Anthony
Eden attacked the "bestial policy" of persecuting
Jews |
1942: Britain condemns massacre of
Jews |
Artificially 1969:
The The British
Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, has told the House of Commons about mass
executions of Jews by Germans in occupied Europe.
Mr Eden also read out a United Nations declaration condemning "this
bestial policy".
He said news of German atrocities sent in by the Polish Government and
widely reported in the press this month would only serve to strengthen
allied determination to fight Nazism and punish all those responsible.
After his announcement the House rose and held a one-minute silence in
sympathy for the victims.
A family moved in next door but they had no furniture and put newspaper
up at the window. They were Polish Jews who had come from their homeland
in a hurry.
Mr Eden described how the German authorities, who have already stripped
the Jews of their basic human rights, were now carrying out "Hitler's oft
repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe".
He described how hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were
being transported from all German-occupied territory "in conditions of
appalling horror and brutality" to Eastern Europe.
In Poland, Jewish ghettoes were being "systematically emptied" except
for the able-bodied who were being sent to labour camps.
"None of those taken away are ever heard of again," he said.
Those who are sick or injured are left to die of exposure or starvation
or killed in mass executions.
The House then heard him read out a declaration made by the governments
of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway,
Poland, the United States, the UK, the USSR, Yugoslavia and the French
National Committee.
It condemned "in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of
cold-blooded extermination" and made a "solemn resolution to ensure that
those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution".
He said the United Nations would try to give asylum to as many refugees
as possible but that there were "immense geographical difficulties" as
well as security procedures to overcome.
James A De Rothschild, Labour MP for the Isle of Ely, made an emotional
speech on behalf of British Jewry thanking Mr Eden and the United Nations
for their declaration.
He said there were many first-generation Jews living in England who
believed they had had a lucky escape from the concentration camps.
Four days ago, synagogues
all over Britain held a day of mourning as a mark of concern for the
massacre of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.
The Chief Rabbi Dr J H Hertz called on all Jews to commemorate "the
numberless victims of the Satanic carnage".
The Archbishop of Canterbury has also expressed his outrage in a letter
to The Times earlier this month condemning "a horror beyond what
imagination can grasp".