The Nazi plan to set up a Jewish “reservation” centered around the Polish city of Lublin is being executed with ruthless disregard of the rights of both Poles and Jews involved, according to eyewitness accounts related to this correspondent today.
Acting upon orders from Berlin, the Nazi authorities are evicting thousands of Poles from their homes to make room for the unwilling Jews who are being driven into the narrow strip of land that is to constitute their “Lebensraum” from various points in the Reich and Nazi Poland.
The Poles are being treated as brutally as the Jews, according to the eyewitnesses. Their eviction is accomplished with scarcely any notice and they are driven to an area lying between the towns of Mlava and Plotzk in Nazi Poland.
At the same time, cattle trains are arriving from Vienna and Prague packed with exiled Jews who will be forcibly marooned in the half-ruined houses and stables occupied by the evicted Poles. Two such trains, according to special Nazi commissars sent to Lublin this week to unload them, are expected to arrive momentarily. One bears 1,500 Jews from Prague, the other 2,000 from Vienna.
The Nazi commissars, the writer was informed, were accompanied by two Jews from Vienna whom the Nazis are holding responsible for effecting the shift to the Lublin area.
What happens to the Jews after they are dumped in Lublin none can establish with any degree of certainty, as communication with that section of Poland does not exist. It is only known that they arrive with little if any luggage and less food. All they are permitted to take with them is underwear and winter clothing.
From Nazi newspapers reaching Budapest, it is known that a rigid military regime is enforced in the Lublin region. The Schlesische Tageszeitung, official Nazi organ in Silesia, boastfully relates, for example, that “iron gloves are being used by our German troops in Lublin to get even with the Jews there who are still shamelessly fresh.” The newspaper adds that the Poles, fearing similar treatment, are painting the word “Pole” on their doors and windows.
The first transports arriving in Lublin contained only males whose passports indicated that they had been born in Poland. Now, however, women are also arriving on the cattle trains and the place of birth is no longer indicated.
Many Jews in Polish areas outside of the Lublin district, anticipating that they will be uprooted from homes which they occupied for generations and forced into the bomb torn “reservation”, are seeking to escape into Soviet-occupied territory.
Reaching the Soviet frontier in Galicia, they encounter no difficulties either at the hands of the German frontier guards as they quit Nazi soil or the Soviet patrols as they enter Russian territory. The Schlesische Tageszeitung estimates that an average of 50 Jews daily are crossing into Russian territory near the border town of Zambrow alone.
“We certainly don’t care where they go,” the newspaper comments, “as long as we get rid of them.” The paper reveals, however, that before the refugees are permitted to leave Nazi soil they are stripped of all their possessions by the German patrols.
The crossing into Soviet territory is effected simply enough, according to all accounts. It is sufficient to tell the Soviet guards that the refugee wants to escape from Nazi persecutions and he is permitted to cross the border without formalities, especially if he states that he has relatives in the Soviet area of Poland whom he wishes to join.
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.
