Gestapo Sends Jews to Reclaim Land in Polish Marshes; Many Die of Malaria

Several thousand Polish and other Jews have been given by the German authorities to the Konskie swamps of Poland and are now reclaiming a wide area of marshes under Gestapo supervision, it was reported here today by an eye-witness reaching Switzerland.

Hundreds of these Jews are dying every day from malaria and undernourishment, at a continuous stream of new arrivals from France fills the ranks of the Jewish slave-laborers, the eye-witness said. The swamps are being drained in connection with the fortifications the German military authorities are constructing in various sections of occupied Poland.

A report reaching here today from reliable sources in Poland states that gestapo units are intensifying their raids throughout the country in an attempt to seize Jews living in hide-outs or possessing false “Aryan” identification documents. Part of these raids, the Podlasie forests have been surrounded and are being combed for fugitive Jews and Jewish partisans. A considerable number of Jews have been taught and executed, the report says.

A report received here from Vienna reveals that there are still several hundred Jews residing in the former capital of Austria. They are all married to “Aryans,” all of them must wear yellow badges. They are working in factories engaged in war reduction. p/>The population is courteous to these Jews, the report says. “Despite the fact that the Nazis have taken measures to curb public demonstrations of sympathy for Jews, many persons still great the Jews in the street and offer them seats in street cars,” it relates. Sympathy for Jews increased in Vienna especially after the distribution recently of leaflets by unknown groups describing the mass-annihilation of the Jews in Poland, the report says.

At the same time, it predicts that those Jews may be deported from the city soon, just because the population uses their presence to demonstrate disapproval of German brutality. The German authorities in Vienna continue their anti-Jewish propaganda in the press and in radio broadcasts, but the majority of the Viennese people are no longer impressed by it, the report stresses.