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Crowds Menace Nazi Troops in Soviet Poland

January 24, 1940
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Large Russian troop contingents were required to guard German automobile caravans from angry crowds when the Nazis entered Russian-occupied Poland, assertedly to aid in the mass emigration of racial Germans from Eastern Poland, Nazi newspapers reaching here tonight disclosed.

A special correspondent of the Westdeutscher Beobachter said: “The utility of this military protection was demonstrated at Lemberg (Lwow), which is filled with Poles and Jews whose attitude was threatening. A crowd gathered around our trucks and had to be held back by the Russian soldiers. We were greeted with shouts of ‘German pigs!’ and other insults which are unprintable.”

Travelers who arrived here said the Nazi “repatriation” plan, expected to involve about 120,000 persons in Eastern Poland, had provoked angry resentment among the Germans themselves, who objected to leaving their homes in bitter winter weather.

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