Official introduction of the Nuremberg racial laws and closing of all Jewish enterprises in the areas of Poland which have been proclaimed an integral part of Germany was reported to Polish Government circles today from the German frontier.
Approximately 200,000 Jews are affected by the measures, the report estimated. Merchandise of the closed Jewish shops has been confiscated, it added. The areas falling under the Nuremberg laws include the cities of Kattowice, Czestochow, Lodz, Kalisz, Pultusk and Posen, as well as the whole provinces of Pomerania, Poznan and Zaglembia and the Polish part of Upper Silesia.
Polish-language newspapers in other parts of Nazi-occupied Poland have received instructions to develop a more anti-Semitic policy and to stimulate more hostility by the Polish population against the Jews. Complying with the order, the Nazified Polish daily Goniec Krakowski started intensified anti-Jewish agitation, taking its line from the official Nazi organ Krakauer Zeitung, which is published in German.
Parallel with the press propaganda, the Nazis started a drive to keep Jews in Cracow from appearing in the streets because the yellow armbands which Jews must wear in Cracow served only to increase Polish sympathy for the Jews and hstility against the Nazis.
To keep Jews off the streets Gestapo agents detain them when they are found walking in pairs. They are separated and each is asked individually what they were talking about. If their answers do not tally they are arrested on suspicion of conducting anti-Nazi conversations.
In a number of cities of Nazi-occupied Poland similar measures are taken against the Polish population. In Thorn, the local Nazi administrator, Herr Weberstedt, issued an order permitting Jews and Poles to walk only in the street, declaring that “the sidewalk belongs only to the conquerors, not to the conquered.” This order also provides:
(1) Jewish and Polish males must doff their hats when meeting an official of the German State, army or Nazi Party; (2) stores and market dealers must first serve Germans and “the conquered population can only be served afterward.”
Though officially not coming under the Nuremberg laws, the Polish population is notified in this order that any Pole found talking to a German woman or girl in the street will be “punished as an example,” and any Polish woman found speaking to a German man on the street “automatically will be assigned to a brothel.”
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.
