Jewish Mortality Mounts in Warsaw Ghetto As Nazis Refuse to Check Typhus There

An average of 750 Jews are dying daily in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of the spread of typhus, which the Nazi medical authorities refuse to check, it was reported by Polish circles here today.

The report, based on information received from Poland through underground channels there, says that mortality among Jews in Poland has increased sixteen-fold as compared with the year of 1938. This does not include Jews executed by the Nazis. Recently more than 1,000 Jewish typhus victims were shot in Warsaw by order of the German military authorities.

Not only does the Nazi administration refuse to give medical aid to the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, but, according to the Polish report, they are constantly transporting Jews from all sections of the Reich to the ghettos in Poland with a view of having as many Jews as possible die of typhus. Ordinarily the form of typhus now prevalent in the Warsaw ghetto is fatal in only one of six cases, but the rate, according to the information from Poland, has risen to forty percent as the result of two years of starvation which have lowered the resistance of the Jews.

While all Jewish doctors and nurses in the ghetto have been mobilized to ark in anti-plague centers in Warsaw, the Nazis are utilizing the spread of typhus a weapon to battle the growing sympathy of the Polish population for the persecuted Jews, the Polish report stated. Nazi propagandists are conducting agitation among the Poles accusing the Jews of being responsible for the spread of typhus. Hundreds of posters have been plastered by the Germans on the streets of Warsaw blaming the Jews for the plague. Similar posters have been placed on the ghetto walls. They read: “Jews-Lice-Spotted Typhus. Entrance and Exit Prohibited.”