Women, Children, Aged Massacred in Warsaw Ghetto As Nazis Send Jews to Russian Front

Hundreds of Jewish women, children and aged men in the Warsaw ghetto were massacred last week by Gestapo agents in a pogrom that lasted for several days and may still be going on – according to information reaching the Polish Government here today through underground channels. The exact duration of the pogrom and the number of Jews that fell victim to the Gestapo executioners is not yet known.

At the same time thousands of able-bodied Jewish men were seized and sent to occupied Russian territory for forced labor at constructing fortifications behind the Nazi lines, the Polish sources report.

Early last week, these sources state, the Gestapo agents posted signs throughout the ghetto streets announcing that the ghetto inhabitants would be deported eastward and that “the first contingent of 6,000 would leave in a few days.” Several days after this announcement two trains did leave Warsaw carrying thousands of Jews jammed together in freight cars.

Meanwhile, the Gestapo ordered all Jews in the ghetto to remain in their homes on a specific night, the Polish Government spokesman here stated. That evening the Nazi authorities sent raiding parties into the ghetto which entered the houses of the Jews and selected those men whom they felt were able to be used for hard labor by the Nazi army on the Eastern front. Jews who were too aged or infirm to be useful as forced labor, as well as women and children, were mercilessly slaughtered.

The Polish sources here emphasized that the full extent of the pogrom has not yet been ascertained, but that on the basis of information already in their possession a large-scale massacre was carried out and may still be in progress.