Nazis Punish Poles for Traffic in Food

Some indication of the scarcity of food and drink in German-occupied Poland and the severe measures taken by the Nazi authorities to discourage buying and selling at any but official prices, is contained in the Warschauer Zeitung, official Nazi organ in Poland.

One news item states that a peasant was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for taking up a collection among the natives of his own village, proceeding to another village, and there buying from another peasant 32 litres of Vodka for 1,328 zloty–a unit price of 41.5 zloty (about $8.50) per liter. The normal price of vodka in Poland is from three to four zloty per liter, but since the German occupation the liquor has disappeared from the market except at extravagant prices.

Another news item in the same newspaper announces that a peasant, a laborer, and a woman were each sentenced to a year in prison for selling pork at illegal prices.

The peasant, according to the newspaper, sold a freshy-slaughtered pig to the man and woman for five zloty ($1.00) a kilogram; and they in turn resold it in small portions at prices ranging from 7.5 to eight zloty per kilogram.

That the Nazi authorities have been having further trouble with the peasants is indicated by two black-bordered obituary notices, mourning the death of Dr. Georg Lephart, special inspector of food and agriculture for the Wegrow-Sokolow district, who was shot and killed on June 12. No further explanation of Dr. Lephart’s death is given anywhere else in the paper.

One of the death notices was signed by Hellmuth Korner, chief of the food and agriculture division of the office of the Governor-General, Dr. Hans Frank. The second death notice was signed by Dr. Fischer, the Governor of Warsaw.