40,000 Jews Died in Year in Nazi Poland

Approximately 40,000 Jews died in Nazi-held Poland during the last year, it was reported here today on the basis of data published by various Jewish communities in Poland.

The increase in Jewish mortality among the two million Jews in occupied Poland has no equal in the history of Polish Jewry. In the pre-war years the Jewish population in Poland was increasing at an average of 8,500 per million.

Those of the two million Jews still alive in Nazi Poland are considered even by the Nazis as “living corpses.” An investigation conducted by Nazi medical commissions among Jews in Poland to ascertain their fitness for hard labor, has established that forty percent of the entire Jewish population is not fit for physical work, the report says.

Tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi Poland are filling the Jewish hospitals, to a point where in some cities the Jewish communities were compelled to convert the quarters of the medical staff into wards. The diseases are due chiefly to starvation. In the city of Tarnov the Jewish community had to add 120 nurses in order to cope with the growing number of patients.

In Kielce, where the Jewish hospital is no longer able to accommodate all the sick, many patients are left in their homes to be treated by visiting doctors. In the township of Shidlovitz, where there are only 2,000 Jews, there are 800 patients in the local Jewish hospital. Nov-Sad, a township with a few thousand Jews, has 700 patients in the Jewish hospital, according to the report.