The German authorities in Lodz, Nazi-occupied Poland, have renewed expulsion of Poles and Jews with the announced intention of making the city “pure German soil,” Polish official sources reported today.
Gestapo units in Lodz, acting under orders from Berlin, are raiding homes of Poles and Jews and evicting them on 15 minutes’ notice, the report said. Permitted to take only a small handbag and 20 zlotys in cash, they are taken by foot or in special streetcars to the Kalisz railway station in Lodz, where they are packed into freight trains and sent to Lublin, Kielce, Radom and other destinations. Many of the freight cars used for transporting the Poles and Jews are roofless, it was said. Men, women and children are packed into them without distinction.
Jews in Lodz who have not yet been exiled are barred from buying food, while Poles are restricted to certain hours for shopping. Most stores, now German-owned, carry signs reading: “Entrance forbidden to Jews. Poles may enter only through the back door.”
The Nazis have introduced in Lodz a “super-Arianism,” calling the “Deutsch-Arisch” (German “Aryans”) the only “real Aryans,” and are relegating the Poles to a position little better than that of the Jews, the Polish account stated.
Only the “Deutsch-Arisch,” who consist largely of local Germans and Germans repatriated from Soviet territory, receive rationed butter. The restrictions placed on Poles and Jews, coupled with a severe shortage of bread, meat, butter, soap, eggs and fats, make it extremely difficult to obtain food.
Local Germans were said to be assisting the Gestapo in the drive against Poles and Jews. The situation is similar in cities around Lodz, where Jews are also being expelled, including the cities of Zdunskawola, Brzezin, Znierz and Pabianice, according to the Polish report. Local Germans loot the Jews’ possession after they are ousted.
The entire male Jewish population of Zdunskawola between the ages of 18 and 80 were driven to Sieradz, where they were imprisoned for some time. En route, they were ordered, despite the bitter cold, to take off their shoes and dance. Many were obliged to dance until they collapsed. A number of Jews and Poles were publicly hanged in Zdunskawola, but the Jews so treated were not of that town, having been brought from neighboring towns.
In Brzezin, near Lodz, which was a center of the Jewish tailoring and clothier trade, there are almost no Jews left. Most of the Jewish homes and synagogues have been destroyed.
In Zgierz and Ozorkow, the few remaining Jews are forced by local Nazi commissars to perform public work dressed in women’s attire. The commissars prescribe the details of the dress, even to the colors. A prominent Jewish lawyer, after being so treated, attempted suicide.
In Osorkow, the Nazi commissar treated Jews similarly, with the additional order that they must walk barefoot to work.
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.
