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Polish Cabinet to Frame Report on Nazi Atrocities

December 1, 1939
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Gen. Wladislaw Sikorski, Polish Premier, announced yesterday that his Government would issue an official paper on German atrocities in Poland and charged that “fearful oppression” has become the “daily bread” of millions of men in the German-occupied territory.

“The Polish territory under the German yoke has become the scene of an indescribable martyrdom,” he declared. “One might have thought that by the time the enemy placed his yoke on the entire country he had sufficiently slaked his thirst for blood and cruelty, but that was not the case. Not a day passes in which individual or collective executions do not take place. Goods are seized and landowners expropriated and deported with the members of their families. Citizens famed for their patriotism are shot. Professors of the University of Cracow, an institution famous for six centuries, are deported far into the interior of Germany.

“Once more the Germans will learn that by acting like this they are not winning glory but shame, not victory but disaster. Poland, which is undergoing the hardest trial in its history, will prevail in this merciless struggle. The world will raise its hand in the name of justice. God will judge and punish the guilty.”

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