200 Released from Sachsenhausen

Geneva advices said today that 200 Polish Jews have been released from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany under the Soviet-Nazi "affidavit agreement" under which they may proceed to Soviet Poland to join relatives who have filed affidavits guaranteeing their support.

The same advices reported that the Nazis have prepared a list of 300 more Polish Jews for immediate release from concentration camps provided each can produce sufficient money to cover transportation to any country desired. Half of this group are reported to have relatives in America.

The Nazi policy on release of Polish Jews from concentration camps and emigration from Nazi Poland is now becoming clarified and may be defined as follows:

1–Polish Jews interned in Sachsenhausen since the outbreak of the war as "enemy aliens" will be released if relatives abroad–whether in Russia or any neutral country–will guarantee their immediate emigration from the Reich by providing their passage;

2–Jews in those sections of Nazi-occupied Poland which are not considered by Berlin an integral part of the Reich will be permitted to emigrate provided they have valid Polish passports and entry visas for other countries;

3–Emigration of Jews from the annexed parts of Poland, including Silesia, Pommerania and other provinces, is altogether prohibited;

4–Emigration from the Lublin "reservation" is officially under ban but illegal crossing into Soviet territory is tolerated and even encouraged by the Nazis;

5–The hundred Jews still residing in Danzig will be permitted to emigrate, but their emigration will have to be hurried or they will be classed in the category of Jews in the annexed territories from which deportation to the Lublin "reservation" is soon to be resumed.

Meanwhile, reliable reports reaching here from the German frontier state that expulsion of all Jews from the city and province of Posen has been completed. All Catholic priests have also been deported from the region, the reports said, and mass deportation of Poles has been initiated with the aim of having the territory "depolonized" by March 1, by which date the entire area is scheduled to be occupied by Germans only. Raids reportedly are being staged nightly and young Poles are being dragged from their beds and shipped to unknown destinations just as were the Jews to the Lublin "reservation."

The Nazi newspaper Warschauer Zeitung reports that a synagogue in Czestochowa, Nazi Poland, was burned down Dec. 25, that Jews and Poles have been forbidden to buy alcoholic drinks and that Jews are prohibited from appearing on the streets after six and Poles after seven p.m. The paper asserts the synagogue was put to the torch by the Jews themselves.

The same newspaper reports that a ghetto has been established in the town of Minsk-Mazowieck and that Jewish Sienna Street, in Warsaw, has been closed to permit demolition of the buildings, most of which were ruined in the bombardment.