Polish Jews Indict War Criminals Responsible for Mass Murders

The names of the ten men who head the list of German war criminals whose punishment will be demanded by the Jews of Poland after hostilities cease were made public today together with descriptions of the crimes with which they are charged.

Addressing a press conference, attended by “Edward Warsawski,” a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto battle who reached England last month, Ignacy Schwartzbart, Jewish deputy in the Polish National Council, accused the following Nazis of chief responsibility for the near-extermination of Polish Jewry; and especially for the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto:

Ludwig Fischer, district-governor of Warsaw; S. S. Group Leader Leist, the German mayor of Warsaw; Dr. Auerswald, Warsaw Ghetto Commissar until July, 1942, who ordered nightly executions of Jews, including 60 men charged with issuing an underground paper; Reinhardt, Chief of the Annihilation Squad who directed sixteen sub-leaders in executing Jews in Lublin, Radom, Otwock, Lwow, and other ghettos, during which hundreds of thousands were killed; Heyman, an officer of the Annihilation Squad; Schoen, Chief of the “Re-settlement Office” in the Warsaw district who was responsible for sending 70,000 Jews in the district into the ghetto.

Also Dr. Tebenow, chief of the Deportation Office, directly responsible for the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto and for deporting thousands of its residents to the Treblinka “death camp”; S.S. Chief Brandt who was in charge of “Jewish affairs” during the liquidation of the ghetto, who personally shot many Jews and led the final assault on the ghetto; Seifert, chief of the supply depot who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of persons by starvation; and Behrens, head of the industrial production department, who organized slave labor and who “withdrew” labor permits from thousands of Jews, thus automatically sentencing them to death.

“Warsawski” told the press conference that all elements within the ghetto participated in the insurrection, aided by members of the Polish underground. He asserted that “part of the underground is anti-Semitic, but these people will not shape Poland’s future.”