Jewish Population in Galicia Reduced by 750,000; Nazi Massacres Continue

Only one-fourth of the million Jews who resided in Eastern Galicia before the outbreak of the war were alive on September 15,1943, official German statistics reaching here today reveal.

The data was compiled before the intensified mass-executions of Jews in Galicia during recent weeks. It arrived here together with another call from occupied Poland, pleading for urgent action to rescue as many Jews as possible from Galicia and other parts of Poland before the extermination of all Polish Jews is completed by the Nazis. “If nothing is done for us immediately, there will not be a single Jew left alive in Poland by the end of April,” the plea says.

In revealing the figures on the number of Jews in Eastern Galicia, the Nazi authorities stated that on September 15, 1942 there were only 278,132 Jewish men, women and children left in that territory. These included 29,000 in the Czortkow district; 29,612 in the district of Tarnopol; 31,988 in the district of Lwow; about 50,000 in the city of Lwow; 26,399 in the district of Stryj; 27,089 in the district of Zloczew; 10,455 in the district of Sambor and 6,119 in the Stanislawow district.

“HURRY, OTHERWISE COMPLETE EXTERMINATION!”, POLISH JEWS APPEAL

The number of Jews remaining in Eastern Galicia has undoubtedly been greatly reduced through mass-deportations, starvation and executions in the five months since the Nazi report was compiled. Not a day passes without a plea for rescue reaching here from Jews in Poland through various sources. The messages are brief, but they indicate that the process of “liquidation” of the Jews has been accelerated.

“Hurry, otherwise our complete extermination is unavoidable!”, one of the S.O.S. messages received here reads. Similar messages reaching here in the course of the last few days indicate that unprecedented deportations of Jews from the larger ghettos in Poland are taking place and that the remaining Jewish population is losing its last hope of survival.

SWISS CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT CHURCHES INTERVENE FOR JEWS

Leaders of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Switzerland, moved by the continued appeals reaching here from Jews in Poland, today issued on appeal asking for the “immediate intervention” of neutral governments to save Jews in the occupied countries “from death and starvation.”

At the same time police authorities in Switzerland took measures today to strengthen the frontier patrols in order to prevent increased illegal entry into the country from Nazi-controlled territories, especially from occupied France.