- Headline
-
Order Half Of Jews In Poland Exterminated
- Publication Date
- Tuesday, November 24, 1942
- Historical Event
-
Nazi Plan to Kill All Jews Confirmed
This database includes 932 articles about this event - Article Type
- Newspaper
- Page Section and Number
- 1
- Author/Byline
- Sidney J. Williams (UP)
- Article Text
- London, Nov. 24.—(UP)—Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi Gestapo, has ordered that one-half of the large Jewish population in occupied Poland be exterminated by the end of the year, reports from the Polish underground movement to the Polish government-in-exile here said today.
The first step the bloody program, it was said, would be to kill 50 per cent of the thousands of Jews living in Ghettoes established by the Nazis. The remainder would be "liquidated" later.
There were 3,113,900 Jews, or 9.8 per cent of the total population, in Poland, according to the 1931 census, but the Germans during more than three years of occupation have reduced this number by killing thousands outright or permitting them to die of starvation and disease.
Special Nazi "liquidation" battalions, commanded by members of the notorious SS Elite Guard, were said to be carrying out Himmler's program. These squads were dragging Jewish victims from their homes or seizing them in streets and driving them to village and town squares in mass roundups for execution, the reports said.
Old men and women and cripples were singled out to be herded to cemeteries where they were mowed down by firing squads, Polish sources said. The Nazis made no attempt to prove that the Jews had committed any crimes or violated German regulations.
Jews who were not executed immediately, it was reported, were packed into freight cars—150 packed to a car that normally was large enough for 40—to be shipped to undisclosed points for liquidation.
The floors of the cars were covered with a thick layer of chlorate of lime sprinkled with water and the doors were tightly sealed. In some cases the trains reportedly remained on a siding for two days before departing, and many of the Jews died of suffocation. The dead were left in the cars with the living. - History Unfolded Contributor
- Carlos G.
- Location of Research
- Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)
Learn More about this Historical Event: Nazi Plan to Kill All Jews Confirmed
- Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (Encyclopedia Article)
- American Jewish Congress (Encyclopedia Article)
- The United States and the Holocaust (Encyclopedia Article)
- 1942: Key Dates (Encyclopedia Article)
Bibliography
Feingold, Henry L., Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995.
Gurock, Jeffrey S., ed. America, American Jews, and the Holocaust. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Laqueur, Walter. The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth About Hitler’s “Final Solution.” New York: H. Holt, 1998.
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