POLISH REFUGEES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 September 1939, Page 8

POLISH REFUGEES

PROBLEM OF TRAGIC INTENSITY ROADS CHOKED FOR DAYS. PITIFUL MASS MIGRATION. NEW YORK, September 12. The New York “Herald Tribune’s” correspondent at Cernauti, Rumania, says that Poland, though only eleven days at war, is already facing a refugee problem of tragic intensity. Even such towns as Tarnopol and Eembowla, 30 miles from the Russian frontier, are crowded with men, women and children who had fled from the west. The roads have been choked for six days with people moving south and east from the advancing German armies and air raids. Thousands are spending the cold, raw nights in the open. There are no facilities whatever for handling such a mass migration of civilians. Those who fled southward are likely to be trapped again if the German armies made a drive to Lwow. Those in the east will be driven against the Russian border. POLISH REPORT HEAVY LOSSES NEAR WARSAW. (Received This Day, 1.55 p.m.) LONDON, September 12. A Polish communique announces that German forces are active in the Modlin sector and also along the San River, but are not making progress towards Lwow. A German attack west of Warsaw, launched at dawn, resulted in 7,000 Polish casualties. TOWNS BURNED DOWN REPRISAL FOR ACTIVI't'IES OF IRREGULARS. (Received This Day, 1.55 p.m.) STOCKHOLM, September 12. The correspondent of the “Svenska Dagbladet,” who toured Silesia, reports that the towns of Wieruczow, Lututow. Sulejow, Falkon, Prozedborz and Radomsk, all on or about the Pilica River, were burned down as a reprisal for the activities of franctireurs (irregular sharpshooters) after Polish regular troops had retreated. Smaller villages met with the same fate, but Lodz is intact. ARMED CIVILIANS ! DENOUNCED & THREATENED BY GERMANS. (Received This Day, 1.15 p.m.) BERLIN, September 12. The Germans attack the defender of Warsaw, General Czuma, for allegedly releasing and arming prisoners from the gaols and arming civilians, which is a “criminal act.” It is added that the Germans will treat armed civilians as insurgent combatants.