Lublin Pictured As Vast Prison Camp with Hundreds Dying Daily of Hunger, Disease

An eyewitness report received here today described the Lublin Jewish “reservation” in Poland as a vast concentration camp in which Jews were dying by the hundreds of starvation and disease.

Receipt of the report followed news that expulsion of Jews to the reservation from the Old Reich–but not from Nazi Poland–had been halted at the behest of Dr. Hans Frank, Nazi Governor-General of Poland. The eyewitness report, received through Switzerland, gave the following description of conditions in Lublin:

“Hundreds of Jews are dying daily in the reservation as a result of hunger, typhus and cholera, and all the dead are thrown into collective graves, which are being dug day and night. The reservation is nothing but a huge concentration camp under the open sky. Thousands of Jews are herded there in primitive barracks in open fields, unprotected from frost, snow and wind, unfed and not permitted any contact with the outer world, unable to secure even bread. In order to prevent their escape, the barrack are located in fields several kilometers from the city of Lublin and are isolated with barbed wire.

“As no Jewish organization is permitted to deliver any food to the reservation, the victims are suffering not only from cold but from actual hunger. They live mostly on potatoes and roots which peasants in the neighborhood deliver to them, partly in exchange for clothing but mostly free and out of compassion.

“As a result of the starvation regime, epidemic diseases, including typhus and cholera, are now raging among the victims and the number of dead is growing daily, having reached several thousands by now. Barred from medical assistance and herded like cattle in the overcrowded barracks, the Jews fear that the epidemics, if not checked, will result in the death of practically all in the reservation, since they live as though in a desert, without even the Red Cross being permitted to deliver assistance to them.”

Meanwhile, S. Valchini, correspondent of the Italian daily Corriere della Serra, the first foreign correspondent permitted to visit Warsaw, reported that Jews in the former Polish capital were still being forced to clean up the ruins. He described how Jews wearing white armlets with six-pointed stars were doing enforced labor in special battalions. The journalist was especially impressed by the long breadlines and the impoverishment of the population. Many formerly wealthy men, he said, were reduced to peddling on the street with a single piece of soap, a pound of beans or a bag of potatoes.