Suffering from an acute shortage of skilled labor, the Nazi authorities have decided to urge German manufacturers to place their orders with Jewish artisan cooperatives in the Warsaw ghetto, it is revealed today by the Berliner Boersen Zeitung, one of Germany’s leading newspapers.
The Nazi organ reports that a special office has now been established by the Nazi administration in Warsaw for the sole purpose of giving advice to German manufacturers as to how they can place orders with cooperatives and institutions in the Jewish ghetto. A circular letter sent out by this office to German manufacturers points out that “forty percent of the half-million Jewish population in Warsaw are skilled artisans, particularly tailors, leather-workers, tilers, joiners.”
“These and other Jewish craftsmen in the ghetto turn out to be good handiworkers and can be used, within limits, to remedy the labor shortage,” the Boersen Zeitung writes. “German manufacturers in districts where there is a shortage of labor are advised to utilize this reserve of qualified workers.”
The Berlin newspaper points out that placing orders with Jewish cooperatives in the Warsaw ghetto will not only alleviate the shortage in qualified labor but “will also reduce the number of non-productive consumers.” Some Jewish artisans in the Warsaw ghetto have already been used for German orders, as an experiment, and their work has turned out to be quite satisfactory, the Boersen Zeitung discloses.
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.
