Jews Under Hedges

Correspondents crossing the narrow strip separating the Czech Army lines from the German Army's advance lines in Sudetenland last week reported the most tragic aftermath of the Sudeten Settlement. Huddled in ditches or scrabbling in the fields for stray potatoes missed by the harvesters in this no-man's-land were hundreds of desperate Jews.

For their plight, both Germany and Czechoslovakia were responsible. Booted from Sudetenland by Nazi Storm Troopers who came in the wake of the German Army, the starving, penniless refugees were refused admission to Czechoslovakia ostensibly because they were technically citizens of Germany, actually because Czechoslovakia has no wish for refugees who cannot support themselves.

From Breclav, now the German Lundenberg, 204 Jews were expelled by Austrian Nazis fortnight ago. For a few days, food was sent from Sudeten towns. Then a desperate Jewish mother smuggled her six- month-old child back into Breclav and the Germans cut off all food. "We are lying beneath hedges," a Jewish mother, big with child wrote to Prague. "We have no money and our only clothing is what we were wearing when we were expelled."

South of Brno, 150 Jews were in the same plight. Smaller groups, many stricken with influenza, dotted the area. Carloads of food sent by Prague sympathizers were turned back at Czech Army lines. One refugee, a Breclav physician, went insane. Czech and German passersby, crossing the no-man's-land, defied the authorities and tossed into the ditches what food they could sneak through.

A plea was sent to the U. S. Minister in Prague, Wilbur J. Carr, and finally the Czech War Ministry, acting with the Czech Red Cross, agreed to help. Food was hurried into the area and negotiations authorized with Germany regarding the refugees' fate.

Meanwhile in Prague public resentment against having to take care of thousands of Sudeten refugees, a good many of them Jews, rumbled into an anti-Semitic demonstration, Prague's first since Nazi annexation of the Czech territory. University students and young doctors milled about the famed square of Wenceslas, named for the Czech patron saint, and chanted "Down with the Jews," "Czechoslovakia for the Czechoslovaks." Cafes were invaded and many frightened Jewish patrons hustled into the streets before police dispersed the demonstrators.

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