The American Red Cross today received from German Charge d’Affaires Hans Thomsen a letter confirming conclusion of a supplementary agreement which will permit Red Cross representatives to enter the “Gouvernement-General” of Poland long enough to supervise distribution of relief supplies.
At the same time, it was learned that the German Government had made a new proposal to the Berlin representative of the American Commission for Polish Relief, Inc., which, like the Red Cross, has been holding out for a supplementary agreement that would insure American supervision of relief distribution, without which the Allied blockade has refused to let supplies through to Poland.
The new Red Cross agreement applies only to the “Gouvernement-General,” which does not include those areas of Poland which have been formally annexed to the Reich. In addition, it provides for free entry of Americans to oversee distribution, but not for permanent residence by Americans. Text of the Thomsen letter, confirming details of the supplementary agreement which was reached yesterday in Berlin, was to be made public as soon as permission was obtained from the German Embassy here.
Discussing the supplementary agreement with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today Norman H. Davis, Red Cross chairman, said: “I would not permit the distribution of supplies from the Red Cross warehouse in Cracow until the supplementary agreement was reached.”
Davis said that James T. Nicholson, Red Cross representative in Berlin, had received permission to proceed to Cracow with as many assistants as was necessary to supervise distribution of six carloads of supplies now in the Red Cross warehouse and eight carloads en route to Cracow from Genoa, Italy.
Under the supplementary agreement, Davis said, supplies would be distributed directly through the Polish Red Cross or, in areas where the Polish Red Cross does not operate, by a local committee comprising five Poles, a German and a Jew. He added that wherever the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was still operating, supplies for the Jews would be allocated to this organization.
Under the new arrangement, the German Government agrees that American relief supplies will be used exclusively for the civilian population and will “at no time be at the disposal of or claimed by the German authorities.” The German Government also agrees, according to the German Embassy letter, to aid in transporting the supplies to the Red Cross warehouse.
The letter covering the supplementary agreement does not mention the Jews specifically, but the original agreement contained a German guarantee that relief would be on a non-sectarian basis.
The Polish Embassy here suggested that the Germans had granted the new concessions to the Red Cross because the British blockade authorities had refused to permit supplies to go through to Poland without adequate guarantees that distribution would be administered by Americans.
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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.
