German authorities in Poland indicated that they will kill and burn to ashes all the inmates of the notorious Qswiecim concentration camp, as well as of all other camps, prior to the retreat of the German armies from the territories in which the camps are situated, president Raczkiewicz of Poland was informed today in an appeal from Warsaw.
Thousands of Jews are still being held in the Oswiecim camp where 65,000 internees have been exterminated in special “death chambers” since the establishment of the camp two and a half years ago. Jewish women are interned in a special camp in Birkenau known as “the Women’s Division” of the Oswiecim camp.
The fate of these Jewish women, the appeal says, can hardly be described. They were brought over in transports from all parts of Europe. Only ten percent of those delivered to the camp are alive. The bulk of the women were sent directly to the “gas chambers” in the camp.
“About four thousand Jewish children, under the age of 10, passed through the Birkenan camp to the gas chambers,” the appeal says. “They waved their little hands smilingly to their mothers on the way to the chambers were already being consumed in to the furnaces of the camp.” The appeal concludes with a note that the Jewish women who are still alive in the camp may meet death any moment since the Gestapo boasts that all camp prisoners will be killed as soon as the Russian armies approach the district in Poland where the camp is located.
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.
