Refugee Trap

The arrival in France of 55 Leader Heinrich Himmler and his dreaded Gestapo agents behind Adolf Hitler's armed legions set thousands of Europe's wearied refugees and exiles on the march once again. Long the traditional sanctuary of the hunted, defeated and homeless, France had suddenly become a huge trap for hordes of domestic and foreign anti-Nazis.

Crowded aboard a little Indian tramp ship built to carry 180, nearly 1,500 refugees from Bordeaux landed safely in England, among them the Baron & Baroness Robert de Rothschild and French Dramatist Henry Bernstein, fleeing Nazi anti-Semitic terrors. Fear of Gestapo black lists brought aboard the same vessel two onetime Government officials: onetime Belgian Transport Minister Marcel-Henri Jaspar and onetime French Air Minister

Pierre Cot, and with them that long outspoken foe of fascism, Mile. Eve Curie. On another refugee ship went Mme. Genevieve Tabouis, longtime No. 1 Paris journalistic Hitler-baiter.

As thousands besieged Spanish consulates in France for visas, numbers of Europe's homeless royalty hurried across the Franco-Spanish border before the Nazi invader. Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg and members of her family were among early arrivals, followed by Her Highness the Maharanee of Kapurthala. Already an exile, Polish Pianist Stanislao Nielziesld sought new refuge in Spain, as did famed Parisian Jeweler Pierre C. Cartier. Adrien Thierry, French Ambassador to Argentina, was more fortunate than French Leftist leaders who were reported to have found both Spanish and Swiss borders closed to them. (But an Italian broadcast said onetime French Socialist Premier Leon Blum and several French deputies had entered Switzerland.)

Princess Josephine Charlotte, Prince Baudouin and Prince Albert, children of Belgium's King Leopold III, fled from France to Portugal in a caravan headed by onetime Belgian Premier Paul van Zeeland. Accompanied by members of the Bourbon-Parma family, onetime Empress Zita of Austria and her son Archduke Otto, pretender to the nonexistent Austrian throne, and five of his brothers & sisters arrived the next night. Already in jampacked Lisbon was Belgian Premier Hubert Pierlot. En route was onetime French Premier and Defense Minister Edouard Daladier. Also on the way was onetime Austrian millionaire Baron Eugen Rothschild and his American wife, the former Catherine Wolff of Philadelphia.

Awaited was the biggest onetimer of them all--onetime Edward VIII (see below}.

Across the Atlantic, Canada prepared to receive Frau Engelbert Dollfuss, widow of the Nazi-murdered Austrian Chancellor, quizzed but finally admitted Grade Fields (see p. 50).

Refugees whose whereabouts were unknown: French Trade Union Leader Leon Jouhaux and Belgian Walter Schevenels, secretary to the International Federation of Trade Unions; British Novelist and World War I Intelligence Officer William Somerset Maugham (last heard of just before German entry into Paris, where he was working for the British Information Ministry); some 120 German and Austrian writers in France, most of them expatriated and sought by the Gestapo, including Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel. A five-day-old message from English Humorist Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, received by his daughter, described everything as normal in his French villa.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.