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Jews in Poland Battle Nazi Police in Barricaded Ghettos

December 4, 1942
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Jews in a number of Polish towns erected barricades around the Jewish quarters and battled Nazi police units and the Gestapo officials who came to deport them, it is reported in a message received here today from the Jewish underground movement in Poland by Samuel Zygelboim, Jewish member of the Polish National Council.

Armed resistance was particularly furious in the city of Nieswiez where a pitched battle took place lasting for several hours, the message stated. The Nazi armed forces crushed Jewish resistance in all towns and massacred every Jew within the area. In some towns Jeaders of the Jewish underground movement advised the Jews not to offer any resistance since it would only lead to the destruction of the entire Jewish population by the superior Nazi units.

The message reveals that the Nazis broke into the Vladimir Modem Sanatorium which is well known in America as the foremost children’s sanatorium in Poland, and massacred 250 Jewish children. The majority of the personnel, consisting of teachers, doctors and nurses, were also murdered when they refused to leave the children. The sanatorium, located fifteen kilometers from Warsaw, was one of the Jewish institutions in Poland supported by American Jewish organizations. The mesaage confirms that no more than one million Jews were still alive in Poland on September 1 and that the bodies of Jews are being used by the Nazis for industrial purposes.

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