$2,400,000 Reported Extorted from Warsaw Jews; Disease Held Continuing

Polish Government sources reported today that the Nazi administration in Warsaw had extorted 12,000,000 zlotys (about $2,400,000 at the pre-war rate) from the Jewish community there. The advices said 10,000,000 zlotys had been paid to the Nazis for agreeing to postpone institution of a ghetto and 2,000,000 for agreeing to require Jews to wear a six-pointed star instead of the yellow armlets as had been planned.

“The special anti-Jewish laws issued by the Nazis in Warsaw are nothing but a racket to extort huge sums from the Jews, since, in fact, German officers do not hesitate to patronize Jewish stores within and outside the ghetto, despite their being marked as Jewish,” the Polish report stated.

Advices reaching here said a typhus epidemic was continuing in Warsaw. This conflicts with statements made by Frederic C. Walcott, treasurer of the American Commission for Polish Relief, that there is no epidemic in the occupied Polish city

An official message received from the International Red Cross in Geneva said that of approximately 400 patients in the Warsaw Jewish hospital more than 250 were typhus cases. In addition, Polish Government circles reported that typhus was prevalent in Warsaw and Nazi authorities were taking measures to prevent its spread among German military forces but were doing nothing to fight the disease among the population, especially the Jews.

Jewish relief lenders said that as far as they knew none of the international relief agencies had yet succeeded in reaching Warsaw with actual assistance. The need of feeding the Jewish population in Nazi-occupied Poland is growing daily, it was said, and non-sectarian organizations had not yet met the problem. The Joint Distribution Committee is functioning in Warsaw and is seeking to find means for extending assistance. “

The Red Cross advised the J.D.C that the Jewish hospital in Warsaw was in extreme need of financial and medical aid. The hospital can accommodate 1,400 patients with adequate facilities, but is now housing only 400 for lack of sufficient funds and medicaments.

The J.D.C. office in Amsterdam, from which emigration of Jews from the Reich was regulated has been transferred by its European chairman, Morris C. Troper, to Brussels and will be conducted by Alice R. Emanuel, who recently arrived from New York as a volunteer worker, it was announced here today on Troper’s return from the Netherlands and Belgium. During his stay in these two countries Troper conferred with Jewish leaders on various relief plans for 1940 and the extent of assistance which American Jews would be prepared to contribute to the carrying out of these plans,

Reports from Hungary said Jews were trying to enter that country from both German and Soviet Poland, despite great difficulties. Those escaping from the Russian-held area, it was said, were mostly Zionists, since Zionism is prohibited in the U.S.S.R.