Details of mass murders in the southern Polish city of Przemysl, perpetrated by the Nazis during the few days they held it prior to occupation by the Red Army, were revealed to this correspondent today.
At least 800 persons, all but a few of them Jews, were victims of the massacre. All members of the Jewish upper classes, including physicians, lawyers, engineers and others, were picked up in the streets, held in a concentration center and subsequently executed. On the evening of the last day of the Nazi occupation, the Nazis captured Jews in the streets and summarily shot them.
It is understood that the Soviet authorities subsequently compiled detailed reports of the Nazi atrocities.
Refugees newly arrived from Warsaw revealed today that the former Polish capital, after a month’s occupation, was still a city of the dead.
Shops, offices and schools are closed. Streets are deserted except for women hastening to bread lines or to barter valuables with peasants in exchange for food. For salt, sugar and old clothes, peasants are giving potatoes, rye and wheat.
The main Jewish quarter, the Nalewki, is still without electricity. Jewish streets are completely blacked out at night, although partial lighting prevails in other districts. Jews are forbidden to use the single functioning bus line or to patronize the only open cinema. Jewish bakeries receive no grain, hence Jews are suffering from a lack of bread.
Soldiers occasionally pass through the streets of the Jewish quarter, throwing bread from automobiles for the sake of photographers who snap pictures of Jewish women and children with outstretched hands receiving bread from the Nazis. The pictures are designed to demonstrate, for foreign consumption, German humanity.
The Jews are entirely without sanitation and the ill receive no medical attention.
Recently, the Nazis instituted systematic robbery by expropriation throughout the city, beginning with the Jews. The procedure is to throw a cordon of Nazi soldiers and storm troopers around a street or an entire quarter, while homes are thoroughly searched and passersby are deprived of money, valuables and clothes.
Apartments are looted of everything of value, including even match boxes or the last kilo of flour. Jews are compelled to carry their property down to the street and load it on special military cars.
In addition, special raids are made on Jewish firms to confiscate their wares. One of these victims is the well-known Carmel Wine Company on Nalewki Street. Some non-Jewish firms have been similarly victimized.
The Germans are systematically stripping the city of everything of value to the Reich. Workmen are even cutting down the overhead wires of the trolley lines and public buildings such as museums and galleries are being completely emitted.
A majority of the residences in the city were destroyed during the Nazi bombardment, resulting in an acute housing shortage. Apartments that were not destroyed are without windows and glass is unobtainable at any price.
Mayor Starzsynski has ordered all refugees who flocked to Warsaw from the provinces to return to their homes and has advised Warsaw residents with relatives in the provinces to join them. The order hits thousands of Jews who fled to Warsaw to escape the wild persecution in provincial centers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
