Polish official circles reported today that 17,000 Pol and Jews were executed by order of German military courts in Poland and more than 23,000 arrested by the Gestapo between the outbreak of the war and the first week of December. The figures do not include en masse public executions of Jews in various Polish towns carried out without any court action.
Meanwhile, news was received that Nazis had started expulsion of Jews from Lodz to the Lublin Jewish “reservation” and that Jews in the town of Szgersz had been ordered to leave.
The Jewish situation in Lodz was described in Jewish reports as “more horrible than it ever was in Warsaw,” with the local Jewish cemetery destroyed, Jewish high schools converted into Gestapo headquarters, Jewish houses pillaged, Jews arrested on the streets and taken away to be tortured and Germans living in Lodz aiding the Gestapo in persecution of Jews.
Polish sources said Nazi terrorism against Poles was also increasing. In Jaroslaw, Rzeszow and Przeworsk there were 700 additional arrests of Poles and Jews, including several Catholic priests, it was said. In Tarnow, Nazis ordered local courts to resume their activities with all proceedings in German and all Jewish lawyers barred.
In Cracow, where Jews must wear special armbands, the Nazi authorities ordered signs posted over numerous restaurants and cafes, including Grand Hotel, reading: “Entry forbidden to Jews and Poles.” In a number of cities of the Cracow district all unemployed Poles and Jews were ordered to register with the local Nazi authorities, and it was believed they would be transported to the interior of the Reich for hard labor.
Le Temps reported from Riga that Jews in Warsaw were no longer seen on the streets because the obligation to wear armbands exposed them to danger of maltreatment by S.S. men or arrest.
“It is only the typhus epidemic raging in the Jewish section of Warsaw that delayed mass transportation of Warsaw Jews to Lublin,” the correspondent said, adding that yellow quarantine notices were posted on many Jewish houses containing typhus cases.
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.
