ZURICH: German Press gangs are forcibly seizing young Frenchmen for deportation “to remove young men likely to be susceptible in the event of an Anglo-Saxon landing in France,” states “Gazetteer Ausanne”.

The Germans are forcibly impressing young Frenchmen without awaiting action by French authorities. A German Commission at Bordeaux recently impressed newspaper staffs aged between 18 and 50. Thus the newspaper “France de Bordeaux” has lost 64 compositors, clerks and even reporters and editors. Youths between 16 and 19 have been arrested in the streets of Bordeaux and sent to German Labour organisation for work on fortification. They are housed in camps surrounded by barbed wire.

The Swiss paper “Tribune de Geneva” states that consternation and terror are reigning in Lyons, where Gestapo and German troops are carrying out a veritable manhunt. In trams and railway stations they are arresting all young men without adequate identity papers. Raids are proceeding continuously, especially at night when whole blocks of houses are surrounded and every flat is searched. — Dawn Delhi

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2018