Evacuation of All Jews from Poland Expected; Groups Gather Torahs for Shipment Abroad

Anticipating the evacuation of all Jews from Poland, the Lodz branch of the Agudas Israel has collected 20,000 prayer books for shipment abroad, it was reported here today by Joseph Goodman, the son of H.A. Goodman, political secretary of the Agudas Israel in Britain, who has just returned from Poland. The Cracow Agudah, he disclosed, has collected 300 Torahs.

Goodman, who was in Poland on a relief mission for the Agudas Israel, confirmed the reports of unbridled anti-Jewish terror, stating that the situation was so bad as to be “almost indescribable.” He revealed that although he wore a British uniform and carried a British passport, he was thrown from a train by anti-Semitic bandits because he was a Jew.

Desecration of Jewish cemeteries, which was begun by the Nazis, is continuing on a large scale, he said, and the government seems powerless to stop it, In the old Cracow cemetery practically all tombstones have disappeared, while a mass grave containing the bodies of 10,000 Jews has been converted into a playground. Goodman said he personally witnessed a gang systematically smashing the remaining tombstones in the Lodz Jewish cemetery.

PLANS MAPPED FOR EXEDUS OF 50,000 JEWS ACROSS POLISH-GERMAN BORDER

After the nine participants in the Kielce pogrom were convicted, students in Lodz staged a demonstration protesting the verdict and factory workers there threatened to strike, Goodman stated.

He reported that plans are being mapped for a mass exedus of 50,000 Jews across the Polish-German border in the area of Stettin. The border was closed at a point near Stettin, on July 8, the British relief worker said, following the arrival in Stettin of a British intelligence officer.

In the first week of July, Goodman, said, 11,000 repatriated Jews from Russia arrived in the Stettin area, and of them 7,000 immediately crossed into Germany, while the other 4,000 are only waiting for the reopening of the frontier to leave.