Jewish Congress Urges World Action Against Treatmen of Jews in Poland

The World Jewish Congress executive committee has adopted a resolution appealing to the civilized world to take action against barbaric treatment of Jews in Poland and the establishment of a Jewish “reservation” in the Lublin district.

“The Jews of the world reject with revulsion and indignation the inadmissible pretext of the Reich Government that it will solve the Jewish problem in this way,” the protest said. “We have no doubt that the civilized world will also reject these decisions of the present German Government.”

The Congress executive also addressed a letter to Polish Premier Wladislaw Sikorski stating that the Jews recognized the exiled Polish Cabinet as the sole authority over the Lublin district and calling attention to the Jews’ indignation over the “reservation” project as well as Jewish sympathy for all Polish sufferers, regardless of race and religion.

A report received by the Congress regarding the Lublin “reservation” said that the German Government intended to publish soon a map of the area entitled “Jehudah,” to signify that it was a Jewish territory. The map would show the territory as having an area of about 1,000 square kilometers, bounded by the San and Vistula Rivers on the west and by the Soviet frontier on the east.

The Soviet authorities are erecting barbed-wire fences on the Russian border of the district to prevent Jews from escaping from the “reservation” into Soviet territory, the report said, but nevertheless several thousand Jews have succeeded in crossing the frontier.

The report asserted that the plan for the “Jewish territory” had been decided upon at the last meeting between Reich Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Premier Vyacheslav Molotoff of Soviet Russia, in Moscow. The plan was later elaborated in Berlin, it was said, with the result that the following four-point program was formulated:

(1) The first to be sent to Lublin will be all Jews from the Corridor, including Gdynia, Posen and Kattowice; (2) next to be removed are the Jews of Vienna and other parts of Austria, at a rate of 2,000 weekly. Such speed turned out later, however, to be impossible; (3) the starting of systematic removal of Jews from the Bohemia-Moravia Protectorate should be effected simultaneously with that from Austria; (4) the latest to be removed should be the Jews of the Old Reich.

This plan, the report said, provided for completion of the removal of all Jews in the Greater Reich by April 1, 1940. It appears, however, that the Nazi rulers have themselves realized the unfeasibility of such a rapid expulsion.

So far, the report declared, more than 5,000 Jews have been shipped to Lublin from Vienna, despite the determination of the Vienna Nazi authorities to have the city “Judenrein” by February, 1940. The Jews in Berlin have so far not been affected by the plan. Jewish leaders in Berlin were recently called to Gestapo headquarters to submit budgets and plans of activities for the next three years, which is taken to mean that they will be permitted to conduct relief and emigration work as hitherto for the next three years.