Bread, Warm Clothes Seen Vital Need for 2,000,000 Jews in Nazi, Soviet Poland

Bread and warm clothing for nearly 1,500,000 hungry Jews in Nazi Poland and winter clothing for 500,000 homeless Jewish refugees under the Soviet occupation is the need of the hour, according to a “reasonably complete and accurate summary” of the situation of the Polish Jews received here today. The summary revealed that:

(1) A million and a half Jews in Poland came under the Nazi occupation and 2,000,000 under the Soviet, the latter including 500,000 homeless refugees from Germanoccupied western Poland;

(2) Nearly 50 per cent of all Jewish-populated townships in Nazi Poland have been demolished by bombing;

(3) The bombing and fighting resulted in about 20,000 Jewish casualties in Warsaw alone;

(4) The present mortality among Jews in Warsaw averages 100 daily as compared with 10 before the war;

(5) The Jewish population of Warsaw, numbering 300,000 after the evacuation, is now nearly a half million, owing to the influx of refugees from nearby demolished towns, of whom 400,000, or 80 per cent, are urgently in need of relief;

(6) Similar want and poverty prevails also among the Jews in provincial towns, reaching unprecedented dimensions;

(7) Jews have been driven out of numerous townships and their property pillaged;

(8) Special levies have been imposed on the Jewish population;

(9) Jews suffer greatly from disabilities to which they are subjected;

(10) In addition to starvation, a formidable danger of epidemics is developing among the Jewish inhabitants;

(11) All Jewish institutions in Warsaw have suspended their activities and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is the only institution caring, on the spot, for as many unfortunates as possible by maintaining 50 kitchens distributing 12,000 free meals daily, distributing as much warm clothing as possible to sufferers, feeding children and orphans, helping evacuated refugees who wish to return to their home towns and organizing relief also in the cities outside Warsaw.

So far the Warsaw office of the J.D.C. has distributed 15,000 parcels of clothing. In the Soviet-occupied territory the relief problem consists not of the 2,000,000 Jews who live there but the 500,000 refugees. They receive Russian aid, limited to one meal daily, which not all are able to get regularly, and they are all in need of winter clothing, which it is impossible to secure in Russia.

Although the Soviet occupation authorities permitted a J.D.C. representative to spend his reserve funds for relief they do not for the time being permit entry of new foreign relief funds.