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Nazis Concentrating All Polish Jews in Few Large Ghettos

July 19, 1942
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A new policy of abolishing the small ghettos in Poland and concentrating all the Polish Jews, and those deported to Poland from elsewhere in Europe, in several large ghettos is announced in Nazi papers reaching here from Poland today.

The reason given by the Germans for this policy are: firstly, it will enable them to make a number of districts “judenrein, and, secondly, it will facilitate the ultimate expulsion of all Jews from Poland. Meanwhile, the congestion in the ghettos in the larger cities is growing daily. In the Belzyce concentration camp, 9,000 Jews from Holland, Germany, Austria, the Czech Protectorate and Slovakia are interned under appalling conditions. In Tarnow, 27,000 Jews are jammed into the ghetto there.

The Nazi newspapers also report that in “an attempt to stop Jews escaping from the ghetto” the German authorities have bricked up nineteen of the twenty-three gates of the Warsaw ghetto. At the same time the ghetto police force has been increased from 1,000 to 2,000. The Jewish policemen, however, still remain unarmed.

The Krakauer Zeitung, which the Nazis publish in Cracow, carries an article discussing the “complete disorganisation of the Polish economic system,” which states that the elimination of all the Jews from the country’s economy will result in the destruction of Polish industries and will lead to the rebuilding of Poland as an agricultural state “whose only task will be to feed the German industrial centers.”

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