Armed resistance spread throughout all the ghettos of Poland before the Germans succeeded in liquidating them, and many Nazis were killed in ditched battles before Jewish resistance was crushed, it is disclosed in a report received from reliable underground sources.
At Tarnow, the report reveals, 7,000 Jews, mainly workers, engaged in a fierce struggle with Nazi soldiers who were sent to liquidate the ghetto. During the battle many Jews were killed and the survivors were loaded into closed trucks whose floors had been sprinkled with chemicals which asphyxiated them. Those who survived the journey are believed to have been executed when the trucks reached the Oswiecim “death camp.”
In the town of Stryj, where only 250 persons were left in the ghetto when the Germans came to liquidate it, several German policemen were killed by the Jews who fled to the neighboring woods. Most of them were subsequently killed by pursuing Gestapo detachments.
In an attempt to avert armed resistance, the Nazis adopted a new method, the report says. In Sosnowice, the Jews were told that they were going to be exchanged for Germans and would be sent to Chile. When all the ghetto dwellers had been assembled, and after they had been permitted to write letters to relatives abroad telling about the projected exchange, they were lined up and shot.
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.
