Some 600,000 Jews from Poland are among the approximately 2,000,000 Polish refugees now scattered in distant parts of Soviet Russia, all in need of relief, it was estimated here today by official Polish circles following a press conference addressed by General Sikorski, Polish Premier and Commander-in-Chief, who recently returned from Soviet Russia after conferences with Stalin.
The Polish civilians, Gen. Sikorski said, were confined in several hundred camps extending from Franz Josef Land to Archangel and Soviet Turkestan. The refugees from Poland, Jews and Poles alike, who have been held in the northern camps are now being brought to the south where climatic conditions and food supplies are better. Special inspectors appointed by the Polish embassy in Moscow are being given facilities to ameliorate the privations of the refugees. More than one-third of these inspectors are Jews, since it is believed that at least one-third of all Polish deportees in Russia are Jews.
Gen. Sikorski said that the Polish army which is now being formed in Russia of Polish and Jewish internees and civilians of military age, already numbers 100,000 men. Some 25,000 soldiers will be sent to the Near East and Britain while the remainder will be stationed in the sector of Tashkent and Almaata, where thousands of civilian Polish refugees are now permitted to reside and where the Polish Red Cross is trying to organize relief for them.
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