Jews in Nazi-held Poland will meet the Jewish New Year in unprecedented misery with consumption, spotted fever and trachoma sweeping their ghettos and with actual starvation caused by the dwindling of food, according to reports received here today by Polish official circles.
The reports state that the Warsaw ghetto has become so overcrowded as a result of deportation there of Jews from small neighboring towns, that despite the autumnal cold, hundreds of people are forced to spend the night in the open, under inadequate tents. Ghetto food supplies are now completely exhausted and attempts to import food from the outside meet with the greatest difficulties. Prices are exorbitant and starvation is so extensive that the mortality rate is rising by the hundreds. Funds of the ghetto Jewish community are steadily diminishing as the German authorities continue to drain huge sums in the form of forced contributions.
Details concerning the transfer of the Jews from the small towns to the ghetto reveal that it was accomplished with the usual brutality and torture. Travelling conditions were almost unbearable.
It is expected that any day now the German officials will call up all males between the ages of 12 and 60, including Austrian refugees deported to the Government General, for compulsory labor. Forced labor camps have already been established at Jozerow, Zamose Biala-Podolaska and Tyszowiec and a quarry being operated with forced Jewish labor at Opatow is particularly notorious. The food situation at the camps rivals that of the ghetto, while the extreme brutality with which the laborers are treated by the camp overseers results in a very large number of deaths daily.
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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.
