HORRORS IN POLAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 October 1939, Page 7

HORRORS IN POLAND

DESCRIBED BY AMERICAN QUAKERS Homeless and Starving People NAZIS WITHHOLDING ALL HELP FROM JEWS RUSSIANS SOVIETISING EASTERN TERRITORY (By Telegraph.—Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, October 25. Details of the fate of Poland are now filtering out. Two American Quakers, Messrs William Macdonald and Homer Morris, doing relief work, staled that 50,000 were killed in Warsaw and many times more wounded. The devastation is heartrending; 35 per cent of the buildings were reduced to heaps of rubble and anol her 25 per cent badly damaged. The worst havoc was in the- crowded tenements of the old city and the Jewish quarters. Thousands are still buried in the debris and the survivors have neither homes, money nor work. The Nazi relief organisation is distributing' 250,000 hot meals daily. The Jews, however, get nothing. Thousands of Polish soldiers straggle along the roads hungry and desperate. Gangs of prisoners and Jews are forced to clean up the streets of Warsaw. Typhoid is spreading and the water is unusable. A Budapest message says the Russians are changing the whole structure of life in East Poland. Small shops are not allowed to remain in the hands of the owners and big shops and factories are vested in workers’ committees. Land reforms bring each peasant 12 acres, a pig and a cow. Russian is prescribed as Ihe main language in the cities. The teaching of religious knowledge is banned in the schools. A Moscow message says the National Assembly of “Western White Russia” meets at Bialystok on October 28. The Assembly of “ West Ukraine” meets at Lemberg on October 26. It is announced that 96 per cent of the registered voters participated in the White Russian elections. Only two of the 939 candidates failed to receive majorities. The percentage of adverse votes for the remainder was never above 15 per cent. Eleven out of the 1496 candidates in the West Ukraine did not receive the necessary majority. Special by-elections are being held.

The Russo-German Mixed Commission is proceeding to Warsaw finally to demarcate the frontiers.