Groups of Jewish deportees from France, Belgium and Bulgaria have recently arrived in Poland and been confined in the ghetto at Lodz, according to reports received today from the Polish underground.
A report reaching here from Rumania states that in the ghetto in the town of Zhmerinka, in Transnistria, there are 3,274 Jews at present, of whom 1,200 are natives of the city and the remainder are deportees from Bukovina, Bessarabia and Germany. Because a section of the original population has been allowed to remain there, the living conditions of the Jews residing in Zhmerinka are somewhat better than in other towns in Transnistria, the report says. The Jewish community has organized a communal kitchen where 600 plates of soup are handed out daily – which represents the only food available to a majority of the deportees. The city also has a Jewish hospital with 12 beds, a home for aged invalids which houses 22, a school with facilities for 310 pupils, and an orphan asylum which cares for 200 children.
These facilities, however, are only a fraction of what is required to meet the needs of the Jewish population and there is a great shortage of living quarters, medicine and clothing. Most of the able-bodied Jews are forced to work in ten shops in the Jewish quarter which are producing goods for the German army. Despite the sub-standard conditions under which they live, the Jews of Zhmerinka are attempting to send aid to 300 deportees in the neighboring towns of Cazaciovka, to 200 in Scaniclavic, to 1,500 in Zatisu and to 1,200 in Catmazow, the report disclosed.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
