The Polish Government-in-exile at Angers, in a review of the effects of Nazi anti-Jewish restrictions on Poland’s economy, predicted today that the Germans would take even more severe measures against the Jews.
The Nazis are seeking to make economic life even more precarious for the Jews and are determined to reduce occupied Poland to “complete slavery,” the Polish official review said. The expulsion of Jews and the pillaging of Jewish property makes impossible the return to normal economic life, it declared.
“The radical measures taken by the Nazi administration in Poland to eradicated the Jews from economic life have brought about a complicated state of affairs because it is not easy to replace a Jewish enterprise with an ‘Aryan’ one,” it was stated.
The review summarized recent anti-Jewish legislation in the economic field as follows: (1) Jews cannot open, reacquire or lease any enterprise; (2) a Jew cannot run a business firm employing more than three persons; (3) all larger commercial enterprises must pass into “Aryan” hands; (4) Jews are forbidden to participate in commercial share holding companies as directors.
Added details of economic conditions in Nazi Poland were received by this correspondent in a report from the occupied area.
“We are on the way to a hunger of the kind not suffered since the Middle Ages,” the report said. “Meat of dead horses is a luxury, while butter and other fats are disappearing into the interior of the Reich. Even salt is rare and can be gotten only at the price of one American dollar per pound. In Warsaw, rationed food is sold in 1,300 stories, but with every day less and less can be gotten in these stories, even with ration cards.”
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.
