POLISH JEWS

Press, Volume C, Issue 29501, 1 May 1961, Page 13

POLISH JEWS

Court Told Of March (N.Z ,P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) HAMBURG. April 28. At the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem today a middleaged woman told the Court of a forced march by Jews in Poland in 1941, in which German guards shot on the spot any child who cried. Parents “gagged their children’s mouths,” she said. Adolf Eichmann, who is accused of mass murder of Jews, sat composed as Mrs Ada Lichtmann, aged 45, told of a chain of atrocities. Mrs Lichtmann described how the Germans arrived in her home town of Wielicza, Poland, in September, 1939, rounded up 32 Jewish men, her father among them, and took them away in a truck. “I ran with my sister-in-law after the truck and we came to a small wood. All the Jews who had been taken were lying dead on the ground, my father among them,” she said. Mrs Lichtmann fled to Krakow, where the Germans “plundered houses and shot and beat up the Jews.” She moved again, and Jews gave all their furs, jewellery and other valuables to the Germans in return for promises they would not be deported.

“But we were dragged from our homes, and the sick, the weak and those who eould not run immediately, were shot in the market square or In bed.” she said. There were sharp intakes of breath as Mrs Lichtmann told of what she saw from a cottage window in Poland on an afternoon in 1941.

The Nazis gathered on a hillside- 20 aged orthodox Jews, dressed in their robes and prayer shawls, with prayer books. They were ordered to chant hymns and lift their hands in supplication to God. “Then officers went up, poured paraffin over them, and set them alight. The Jews—their hands still high in supplication—were burned to death,” said Mrs Lichtmann.