Nazis Renew Expulsions of Jews from East Prussia to Lublin Area

Despite reports that expulsion of Jews from the Old Reich to Poland had been halted, deportations have been renewed in East Prussia, it was reliably reported today, and Jews in Berlin feared that the enforced migrations would spread to other parts of Germany.

More than 100 Jews were expelled by the Gestapo from Treuburg and several hundreds from Elbing, Marienburg and Schneidemuhl in East Prussia to Biala-Podlaska, near the city of Lublin, in the Lublin Jewish “reservation,” it was said.

In other parts of the Reich, Jews were being expelled from their towns to other cities within the Reich. Many Jews, fearing such wholesale expulsion, were seeking to move individually, but the Gestapo was barring travel permits to most of them, especially to Jews who had at any time been held in concentration camps.

The 1,200 Jews from Stettin, the first in the Old Reich to be expelled to Lublin, are for the most part now lodged between Piaska and Nisko, south of the city of Lublin, it was ascertained. Some of them are held in Belzyce. Letters which the Stettin Jews wrote to their families in the Reich told of families being separated on their arrival in the reservation.

One letter said: “We are 20 kilometers from Lublin. Please tell the children. We feel well. God will help us. We still have chances for emigration.” Another related: “Uncle and grandfather are 20 kilometers away from us. Karl and most of our acquaintances are also in a different village. Stick together and do not neglect us. In God we trust.”

A report from Breslau said that anti-Jewish persecution had been intensified there following the appointment of a cousin of Julius Streicher as local Gestapo chief. Jews were forbidden to ride in taxis. Three hundred were arrested and fined 300 marks each for not having the names “Sarah” or “Israel” on their food cards, one Jewish woman being sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. Distribution of food cards was put under Gestapo supervision.

The Jewish hospital in Breslau was confiscated by the authorities for military use and the Jewish community was obliged to vacate on one day’s notice. Local Catholics offered the Jewish community beds in the Catholic hospital, but the Jewish patients instead were distributed to private Jewish homes.