Nazis Ousting of Jew Artisan from Workshops in Warsaw Ghetto

The ousting of Jewish artisans from workshops, established by the Nazis in the warsaw ghetto for the production of various articles for the German war effort, is reported in the Krakauor Zeitung, a Nazi paper reaching here today from Poland.

The elimination of the Jewish artisans is taking place in pursuance of a plan to make all the workshops in the ghetto “judenrein” by the end of this year, the Krakauer Zeitung states. It adds that the innovation was undertaken following the visit this month to the Warsaw ghetto of the Nazi commissar for artisan work in the Reich, a certain Herr Schram.

Thousands of Jewish families in the ghetto will be affected by the new plan which indicates that the Nazis contemplate the eventual expulsion from the ghetto of even such Jews as have hitherto been needed for German production. Several thousand Jews in the Warsaw ghetto have been working as artisans in four large workshops and many smaller plants which, supervised by Nazi administrators, produced clothing, shoes, underwear and other articles for the German army. They received their pay partly in cash and partly in foodstuffs provided for them by the Nazi administration in order to keep them fit for work.

With a shortage of skilled workers, the Nazi authorities in Berlin only a year ago recommended to German industrialists that they send part of their production orders to occupied Poland to be executed by qualified Jewish workers there. The quality of the work of Jewish tailors, furriers, shoemakers, blacksmiths and other artisans was on various occasions praised in the Nazi press. The present new policy of ousting all the Jewish artisans in spite of the increased shortage of skilled labor in the Reich is taken here to mean that the Nazis are determined to continue their deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto even at the price of replacing the much-needed Jewish artisans there with less qualified non-Jewish workers.