Massacres of Jews on an unprecedented scale are now taking place all over Nazi-occupied Poland coupled with mass-deportations of Jews from Warsaw, Imow, Przemysl and other towns, big and small, according to a “SOS” received here today from the Government-General section of Poland.
” Save us from death” the call appealed. It reached this neutral country through the Polish underground movement together with a brief report stating that “the Nazis have started their program of total extermination of the Jews in Poland.”
Unable to give any details because of the manner in which it was smuggled out of Poland, the sketchy report reads; ” In addition to mass-deportations of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, the Nazis have started hunting down Jews in all large and small towns throughout the Government-General, including Lwow, Przcmysl, Radom and other places where Jews are concentrated, Jewish families are being torn apart. The men are assembled in camps prior to deportation, Some are sent to the devastated areas of occupied Russia and others to coal mines in German territory. The women and children are being sent to unknown destinations. Large-scale pogroms of unprecedented ferocity are proceeding, at the same time, throughout Poland. The Nazis have started carrying out their program of total extermination of Polish Jewry. Save us from death”
Previous reports reaching here from Poland this month stated that more than 300,000 Jews already have been deported by the Nazis from the Warsaw ghetto to unknown destinations. Though they constitute about one-half of the entire Jewish population in the ghetto, the merciless deportations continue at the rate of several thousand a day, one report said.
ONE THIRD OF DEPORTED JEWS DIE, NAZI OFFICIAL REPORTS
Mass deportations to the German-conquered regions of Eastern Europe have resulted in terrible ” wastage of human life” amounting in many instances to 30 per cent of the deportees, according to information received from underground sources in Germany.
The underground informants give the gist of a report by S.S. special detachment leader Ferdinand Riege to Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi Gestapo and Europe’s police dictator. Riege was in charge of the first mass deportations of Western European Nazi victims to Eastern Europe. The report states that “unexpected difficulties arose as a result of which wastage of human life due to illness, suicide, etc., amounted to 30 per cent.”
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