Members of the House of Commons and the House of Lord and high dignitaries of the British Church were today in receipt of a desperate appeal for aid from the embattled Jews of the Warsaw ghetto.
Two messages from the ghetto, addressed to Dr. Ignacy Schwarzbart, Jewish deputy in the Polish National Council, and to his late colleague, Samuel Zygelbojm, were received last night through underground channels and Dr. Schwarzbart immediately had copies sent to all parliamentarians and church leaders together with an appeal for immediate assistance for the Jews.
The messages – dated April 28 and May 13 – review the battle in the ghetto between the Jews and the Nazis and reveal that many of the Jews were burned alive when German flame throwers set fire to the dilapidated ghetto buildings. They confirm that several members of the ghetto Council were shot and that about 1,000 Nazis have been killed. Particularly stiff resistance was put up by several thousand Jews who barricaded themselves in the underground storehouses of the ghetto, the messages reveal. They were overcome only when the Nazis brought up artillery and shelled their quarters, setting them afire.
The Jewish groups, it is disclosed, appealed to the population of Warsaw for help, but although the Poles sympathized with the Jews, there was little they could do. Only the United Nations can offer immediate and effective assistance, the messages, which are signed by the Central Committee of the Jewish Labor movement and the Jewish National Committee, conclude.
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