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Lublin Region Slated for Cession to Russia, Paris Hears

December 13, 1939
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Polish official circles today received information that the Lublin Jewish “reservation” might pass from the hands of Germany to Soviet Russia as a result of a Nazi plan to cede some of the German-occupied Polish territory to Russia in exchange for Soviet food supplies.

At the same time, French newspapers reported that the Soviet authorities might use their influence with the Nazis to secure the transfer to Soviet Galicia of machinery from Jewish textile factories in Lodz confiscated by the Germans in order to re-establish these factories in one of the Soviet-occupied Galician cities.

The Polish information, reporting on general developments in Poland, said: “The terror conducted by the Nazis is directed most severely against the Jews, who are not only being forced to do the hardest physical labor but are being humiliated and starved while their belongings are being confiscated by the Nazis.”

The report spoke of Nazi executions of Jews and declared that “slaughter of Jews en masse occurred in Blowie, near Warsaw, and other places.”

According to this report, Berlin has made up its mind to convert German-held territory in Poland into “an agricultural factory” and to liquidate all industrial enterprises there, concentrating commerce in the hands of the Germans. Until this scheme is carried out the Nazis feel it would be advantageous for them to revise their boundaries with the Soviet and offer the Russians more Polish territory in compensation for food.

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