Cracow Ghetto Liquidated in “worst Pogrom of Nazi Annihilation Campaign” Poles Say

Thousands of Jews in the Cracow ghetto were slaughtered and other thousands were deported to the dread concentration camp at Oswiecim during the week-end of March 13-15 in what is described as “one of the worst pogroms of the Nazi annihilation campaign,” according to reliable information reaching Polish Government circles here today.

While the exact number of Jews that remained in Cracow before this latest massacre is not known, reports reaching neutral countries early in March stated that about 5,000 were confined in the ghetto there. Indirect confirmation of today’s report was given by the renegade American broadcaster Paul Revere over the Berlin radio on April 2 during an account of a visit he had just made to Cracow. “Not a single Jew remains in the city,” Revere said.

While Gestapo gangs raided the ghetto in the Podgorze quarter of the city, shooting and killing at random, other Nazi squads herded large groups of Jews into cattle trucks, the report says. These trucks, which are described as “death wagons,” transported all the victims to the Oswiecim camp, which, Polish circles here state, has recently been equipped with special facilities for mass executions. The report adds that it is presumed that all the Jews taken to Oswiecim are dead.

The same report reveals that a large part of the Jews living in the Lodz ghetto were recently transferred to the small village of Ozorkow. Their present fate is unknown.

Polish circles here report that information reaching them through underground channels indicates that many of the large ghettos which had been almost completely liquidated have now been filled with Jews transferred from smaller towns. These Polish sources added that it is obvious that these ghettos are being used merely as assembly points from which the victims are taken for extermination.