Warsaw Labor Conscripts Beaten with Iron Bars, Trieste Hears

Reliable reports reaching here said today that a number of Warsaw Jews seized for labor were ordered to undress and then were beaten with iron bars until they were covered with blood and their faces and limbs were swollen. They were then compelled to work and were ordered to return three weeks later for further “service.”

Jewish women were asked if they knew how to play the piano and if they answered in the affirmative were ordered to clean lavatories with their hands. Other women were forced to scrub the floor with their underwear and were then obliged to put on the wet underwear in the bitter cold weather. Many fell ill and one young woman died of pneumonia as a result.

All Jewish dispensaries in Warsaw were expropriated and were turned over to “trustees,” with the owners not allowed to enter the shops. According to a refugee who escaped from Nazi Poland on March 1, the Jewish middle class in Warsaw is completely ruined. Fewer than ten Jewish shops remain in the former Polish capital. Jewish businesses are being “Aryanized” at an accelerated pace and its is believed that the last Jewish business will disappear within two months.

At the same time mass arrests were continuing among the Jewish intelligentsia. Wealthier Jews were making every effort to emigrate, but a great number of professionals no longer had the necessary funds to emigrate.

A blacklist has been prepared of firms which before the German invasion supported the boycott of Nazi goods or showed a preference for domestic products. Jews have been deprived of legal representation since Jewish lawyers are unable to practice in courts and non-Jewish attorneys, organized under the leadership of Commissar Wendorff, are not allowed to accept Jewish clients.

Many Poles in the towns of Grodziesk, Lublin and Kielce were reported to have borrowed Jewish armlets to avoid being transferred to Germany when the Nazis began hunting for Poles on the streets to be sent to the Reich for forced labor.