Mass deportation of German Jews to Polish swamps continued today as German officials announced that the Government was determined to make the Reich “judenrein” by deporting all of Germany’s 190,000 Jews.
Travellers arriving here today from the Reich reported that thousands of Jews in Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt-on-the-Main, Dusseldorf and cities in the Rhineland are being hunted from their homes and transported nightly in cattle trains to Poland. They described how Jewish men, women and children are dragged from their beds by midnight raiders and forced into trucks by Gestapo agents. These trucks convey the Jews to the railroad stations from where they are shipped to Poland. The deportees are permitted to take along with them only a small valise containing the barest necessities. During the raids they are robbed of cash and other valuables by the Gestapo agents under the pretext that they are not permitted to take with them more then 100 marks.
Young Jews who were assigned to work in German factories engaged in war production were notified last week that they would be permitted to reside in Berlin provided that they lived in restricted Jewish areas. However, since Sunday, they too are being deported. Some Jews are ordered to leave at a few minutes notice while others are given a week’s time to prepare for their expulsion.
The evicted Jews are all taken to Lodz, from where they are being transported to Pinsk for work in the swamps that formed the old Polish-Soviet frontier.
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