The Nazi authorities in Poland have ordered Jews owning more than 2,000 zlotys in cash and property to declare all possessions by Jan. 19, it was reliably reported today.
The decree, climaxing the confiscation of Jewish property through collective fines and expropriation of Jewish businesses, was interpreted as foreshadowing the final pauperization of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Included in the inventory which Jews must declare are all household goods, furniture, silverware, clothing and movable possessions. The measure was apparently prompted by the fact that Germans repatriated from Baltic countries who were being moved into Poland were arriving without household goods and clothing reserves.
The French radio yesterday broadcast a report quoting the Berlin correspondent of a Dutch newspaper who described persecution of Jews in Poland and asked: “Why is not the world taking any cognizance of the plight of the Jews in Poland?”
A report received by the J.T.A. correspondent from Nazi Poland said that confiscation of Jewish property was proceeding at a rapid pace, with the Jews denied any recourse to the courts.
It was also declared that mortalities from typhus were mounting among Warsaw Jews. The Warsaw Jewish hospital now has 1,200 typhus cases. During November alone 800 Jews in the former Polish capital died of the disease. The Jewish hospital lacks sufficient medical supplies and is unable to provide adequate treatment. In some Jewish sections, where typhus is particularly prevalent, signs have been posted reading: “German soldiers prohibited from entering this street because of typhus among the Jews.”
(The typhus epidemic has resulted in a “great number of dead among the Polish population,” it was reported by Sonia Tomara in a Bucharest dispatch to the New York Herald Tribune. Refugees from Poland were quoted as reporting a grave fuel shortage in Warsaw, Cracow, Lwow and other cities, with typhus resulting from an intense cold wave.)
Seizure of Jews on many streets for forced labor is continuing in Warsaw, according to the report, despite the Jewish community’s having agreed to furnish 2,000 Jewish laborers daily to the Gestapo for street cleaning and other forms of labor. A delegation of the Jewish community has appealed to the Gestapo to halt the seizure of Jews and has offered to supply voluntarily a larger number of Jewish laborers.
The 2,000 now supplied to the Gestapo include former merchants, intellectuals, artisans and workers. The community requires 5,000 zlotys daily to feed them, which sum is becoming increasingly harder to obtain. It was said that funds from abroad were urgently required and the situation would become critical in the Spring, when streets now covered with snow would have to be cleaned.
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.
