News Brief

A public appeal to the displaced Polish Jews in the British and American zones of Austria to return to Poland has been made by the Jewish committee of Wroclaw, in Lower Silesia.

The appeal points out to the Jews that it is not necessary for them to remain in “shameful” camps and asserts that many of the refugees would not have left Poland had not “reactionary elements” created a panic to make” political capital out of our misfortune.” The Wroclaw committee also urged the closing of all DP camps.

Reviewing the situation which returning Jews will find in Poland, the appeal (##)ays that there are some 400 Jewish institutions in Lower Silesia, including 23 Jewish schools and 40 orphanages. It also says that the Jews will have an opportunity to rebuild their national, cultural and economic life in Poland and promises that there will be sufficient communal assistance to permit repatriates to readjust themselves.

A Ukrainian who posed as a victim of Nazi persecution has been arrested in Line following a complaint by 25 Jewish residents of a DP camp there, who recognized him as a commander of a pro-Nazi Ukrainian militia unit which massacred Jews in the Polish town of Mosty Wiolkie, near Lwow. The Ukrainian, a Dr. Wassil Stronicki, became the burgomaster of Mosty Wielkie after it was overrun by the Germans. He organized a militia unit and supervised the burning alive of several hundred Jews in the local synagogue.

Stronicki subsequently came into disfavor when he accused the German military commander of the town of being too lenient to Jews, and was sent to a concentration camp, from which he was freed by the U.S. Army. At the time of his arrest last week he was a member of the Ukrainian DP Committee in Linz.