The merciless slaughter by the Gestapo of 30,000 German Jews, the mass-execution by poison gas of 26,000 Polish Jews and the massacre of 10,000 Jews in Hrubieszow, near Lublin was reported here today by the Polish vice-Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk on the basis of reliable information just received by the Polish Government here.
The large-scale massacre of the Jews in Hrubieszow took place only two weeks ago, on June 24, the Polish vice-Premier stated. Not a single Jew there was left alive by the Nazis. About 2,500 more Jews were massacred by the Nazis in other sections of the Lublin district. They included 108 Jewish children who, together with their nurses, were driven, during the night, from an orphanage and mowed down by machine guns outside the town.
The 30,000 German Jews were executed by the Nazis in the Minsk region to where they had been deported from Germany, the Polish vice-Premier disclosed. The suffocating of the 26,000 Polish Jews by poison gas took place in the two “Jewish” concentration camps which the Nazis have established at Belzec and Trawniki. All these wholesale unders of Jews were in addition to the 700,000 Jews previously massacred in Poland.
AMERICA, BRITAIN AND VATICAN ASKED TO PREVENT FURTHER MURDERS
Together with the information which the Polish vice-Premier made public today, the Polish Government also received a heart-breaking appeal from the underground movement in Poland asking for adequate and immediate reprisals by the United States and Britain in order to halt the Nazi mass-murder of innocent civilians. The appeal also demands that the Vatican should more forcefully defend the nations under German domination.
Acting on this appeal, the Polish National Council held a special session at which it was decided that the Polish Government will issue a public warning to the German Government and a proclamation to the people of Germany stating that the severest reprisals permitted by international law will be applied for the barbarities which the Nazis are committing in occupied Poland. The Polish Government was also urged to do its utmost to awaken the consciousness of the civilized world against the Nazi atrocities.
BRITAIN THREATENS REPRISALS FOR NAZI MASSACRES OF JEWS
The British Government took direct action today to bring the Nazi massacres of Jews in Poland to the attention of the civilized world by calling a press conference on this subject.
The conference was addressed by the British Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, by the Polish vice-Premier, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, and by the two Jewish members of the Polish National Council, Dr. Ignacy Schwartzbart and Samuel Zygelbaum.
Speaking in behalf of the British Government, Mr. Bracken announced at the conference that retribution will be exacted from the Germans after the war for the horrible crimes which the Nazis are committing against the civilians in occupied countries. He especially stressed the fact that 700,000 Jews have perished in Poland as a result of Nazi atrocities.
Vice-Premier Mikolajcayk, reporting on the Nazi barbarities in Poland, stated that the death rate among the Jews there has risen from six per 1,000 before the war to 24 per 1,000 now. Among the non-Jews in Poland it has risen to 14 per 1,000, he stated.
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.
