Jews in Galicia Fear Massacres on Jewish High Holidays; Only Few Thousand Left

The few thousand Jews left alive by the Nazis in Galicia as “useful workers” are living in constant dread that they will be massacred during the Jewish High Holidays which occur at the end of next month, it is reported by Polish Jews who succeeded in escaping this week into Rumania and Hungary.

The reports which reached here today say that the fear of the Jews in Galicia is based on the experiences of the last two years, when Jews were unharmed by the Nazis until Passover, when they were killed in the tens of thousands. On subsequent holidays, the massacres were repeated.

At present there are only several thousand Jews left in the Galician section of Poland. They are all confined to labor camps near Lwow, Bochnia, Drohobidz, Stanislawow and Tarnopol.

The first mass-killings of Jews in Galicia started on Passover, 1942. There was relative calm after this till the Jewish High Holidays in autumn, during which 12,000 Jews were executed in Stanislawow, 2,000 in Kossow and 20,000 in Horodenko, Zablotow and Kuty. After these horrible pogroms, there was another peaceful lull until Passover, 1943, when the Nazis renewed the mass-executions. In on day 8,000 Jews were massacred in Sniatyn, where all Jews from neighborhood townships were concentrated. There were only 700 Jews left alive in the whole of the Sniatyn district who were forced to work in German enterprises as specialists. But on Shebucth, 1943, these too were killed.