Tens of thousands of Jewish deportees from France, Belgium, Holland, Bulgaria and the Government-General section of Poland are confined in labor camps in Upper Silesia, in Poland, where they are being used for road building, mining and other difficult manual labor, according to a reliable report reaching here today.
Among the deportees are several thousand women, who are also compelled to work, the report says. It declares that conditions at most of the camps are so appalling that many of the internees have committed suicide. In a camp at Koenigshutte, the report discloses, there are 3,000 French Jews, including children of 14 and 15 years of age, who are forced to work in neighboring potassium mines and to dwell in underground quarters. They are permitted to come up to the surface for only two hours every two weeks, on alternate Sundays.
At Camp Breig near Breslau, the report continues, 600 Parisian Jews are employed as road-builders. The work from 4:30 A.M. until 7 P.M. with only one hour for rest and eating. About 9,000 Jewish deportees from Czechoslovakia, Holland and France are working in the Myskiwuez-Chrazanow-Trzebinia region, while 5,000 from the Government-General are in a camp at Myslowitz. A few thousand Jews in the Katowice-Birkenau-Wadowice district are used for constructing bridges and building houses and roads.
Two thousand Jewish women from Paris are at Oberlangen-Bielau and another 300 are at a camp near Neisse, the report reveals. Conditions at the latter camp, it adds, are particularly bad, and many of the women prisoners are reported to have taken their lives.
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.
