Gestapo squads are engaged in a large scale manhunt for fugitive Jews who succeeded in escaping from many of the ghettos in Poland during the chaos resulting from liquidation of the ghettos and the execution and deportation of most of the residents, according to a report from the underground received by Polish-Jewish circles here today through Polish Government channels.
The report states that the number of executions have lessened recently because only few Jews remain. When a fugitive Jew is caught outside the ghetto walls he is immediately executed, the report discloses. It says that since April of this year 30,000 Jews have been executed during liquidation of the ghettos. Among those killed were all members of the various ghetto councils, teachers, lawyers and other intellectuals.
The ghettos in Lwow, Radomsk, Ujazd, Radzimin, Ostrow-Mazowieck, Sokolow, Bialystok, Luck, Dzydlowiec, Wlosczowa and Dzozere, near Lwow, have already been demolished, the report said, although there are a few Jews left in Lwow. They are employed in Nazi war industries.
Many Jews are trying to save themselves by posing as “Aryans,” the underground information discloses, but the German police are systematically hunting them down. A Jew who is discovered attempting to masquerade as a Christian is executed on the spot. One hundred and fifty such Jews were murdered in the Siedlece district within the last few weeks, the report asserts. Poles are punished severely if they assist the fleeing Jews in any way. A baker, together with his wife and sixteen-year-old son were recently executed for selling a roll to a Jew.
POLES FORCED TO SEEK JEWS HIDING IN WARSAW HOUSES
In an attempt to ferret out every fugitive Jew and to prevent Poles from sheltering Jews, the German authorities have appointed committees of Poles for every block of houses in Warsaw and are holding them responsible for seeing that no Jews are hidden in any of the apartments. The safest hiding place left to the Jews is the woods and many have fled to the forests in eastern Poland.
The report says that there are about 20,000 Jews still left in Vilna, where the only remaining ghetto in Lithuania is located. It adds that recently many truckloads of Jews were brought to the Vilna ghetto, but were taken from there after a short time and executed near Ponary. All Jews in the Tatra district have been deported or killed and the only survivors are about 100 who work under appalling conditions in the quarries at Zakopane. In Tarnov, the report continues, the Nazis have assembled 5,000 Jewish tailors who were brought there without their families to work in clothing factories manufacturing uniforms.
Revealing further details concerning the Warsaw ghetto battle, the underground report estimates that 5,000 Jews perished during the hostilities. The Tlomacke Synagogue, a half-mile outside the ghetto confines, was blown up by German troops. Whole streets lay in ruins, the report discloses, and quotas Poles as stating that the fire that raged in the ghetto was the worst in the history of Poland
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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.
