REIGN OF TERROR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 9 January 1940, Page 6

REIGN OF TERROR

NAZIS IN POLAND VIOLENCE AND BLOODSHED CHILDREN ARE STARVING LONDON, 15th December. Reports of the terrible reign of terror in Poland as the result of the conquest by the Nazis are now filtering out to the rest the world. This story is told by a young Polish woman who has just reached England with her baby daughter. “The streets of Warsaw are lined with starving children pleading for scraps.” she said. “The Germans have cut off all food supplies, and their soldiers say they don’t see why the Poles should eat when their own families are starving in Germany. She told her story with few adjectives and no emotion. Perhaps that is not surprising in a woman who went through the horrors of the Polish siege with her baby, was forced six times by Nazi bombs and machine guns to seek fresh refuge, and lived a fortnight, with eleven other people, in a rat-ridden cellar on rice, macaroni and a few scraps of horseflesh. “POLICY OF EXTERMINATION” “We came to regard the Nazis’ policy in Poland since the fall of Warsaw,” she said, “as one of deliberate extermination. Hundreds of people have been executed on the flimsiest pretexts. A man has only to be a landowner, an estate official, a postmaster, or a school teacher, and he is put against a wall and shot. “The peasants alone can rise in the morning confident that they will be still alive at night. The Nazis need them to keep the agricultural industry going and help counter the Allies’ blockade. She had a list of atrocities of which she had personal knowledge. One victim was Potworowski, chamberlain to the Pope, who was shot before the eyes of his wife and children. “His wife was ordered to dig his grave,” she said; “then, when she had finished, made to fill it iji again and told that he had been thrown into a hole containing others in a Jewish cemetery.” EXECUTION OF BOY, 12 YEARS On her list was a boy of 12 executed because he hauled down a German flag ir Szamotul and hoisted a Polish one. “Poles and Jews,” she said, “are treated with equal brutality and ruthiessness. They are pushed and kicked all over the place. I have seen little children knocked violently off the pavement into the gutter.

“The S.S. (Black) Guards, the S.A. (Storm Troopers) and other groups making up the occupation forces are allowed to rob and to do what violence they wish. Thousands of people have had everything of value stolen. I have lost furniture, jewellery and all I possess.

“Every park and open space in Warsaw is now filled with graves. Men, women and children killed in the siege the still being dug up from among the ruins.”

Her eyes rested on the landscape outside the little house from which she was speaking. She ended quietly: “To come to England from Poland is like moving from Hell into Heaven.”