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Swiss Newspaper Says International Red Cross Should Investigate Warsaw Ghetto

May 3, 1943
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The office of War Information today reported from Switzerland that the anti-Nazi newspaper Die Nation, which is published in Berne, suggests that if an International Red Cross commission is sent to Smolensk to investigate the Nazi stories of the bodies of massacred Polish officers in the Katyn forest, it should also visit the Warsaw ghetto and investigate the Nazi mass-murder of Jews in occupied Poland.

“The investigation probably would be worth while. It belongs to the picture of ‘New Europe,'” Die Nation states. It emphasizes that photographs have reached Switzerland, taken in Warsaw, which show the horrible scenes of thousands of starved, naked bodies of men, women and children piled up and Jewish grave-diggers “forced to bury their racial brothers and standing up to their knees in corpses.”

The newspaper concludes by stating that if the Nazis do not give explicit permission to an International Red Cross commission to stop in Poland on its way to Smolensk and stay there as long as necessary and to move freely and speak freely with the population, then “the Red Cross had better stay home and do its usual work in the service of humanity.”

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