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Desperate Food Shortage in Baltic Ghettos; Jews Sell Last Valuables for Bread

March 13, 1942
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The desperate shortage of food among the Jews confined in the ghettos in the Baltic countries has driven them to trade their last valuables to non-Jews for bread, despite the severe penalties provided for illegal intercourse between residents of the ghetto and persons outside.

A story appearing in the Deutsche Zeitung im Ostland, Nazi paper for the Baltic area, reaching here today, reports that two Latvians have been arrested in Riga for violating the regulations forbidding intercourse with Jews. They are charged with approaching a Jewish home at the edge of the ghetto and purchasing watches from its residents.

The Goniec Krakowski, a Nazi-censored Polish newspaper published in Cracow, reports that the food rations for Jews and Poles in that city, which were already below subsistence level, have been further reduced. Hitherto the daily food ration for a Pole was 500 calories, and much less for a Jew. Compared with pre-war prices, a Jew was permitted to buy daily food worth not more than three American cents in local currency.

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